Káyòdé

For context. This is what you were referencing, which the actual author has clarified. Same day, a few hours apart. It's ok not to like someone. But I am against bad-faith debating

I feel like sometimes we don't think deeply enough about the problems we're trying to solve. We just come up with what sounds cool to say. Take Nigeria's low tax-to-GDP ratio, for example. Why is it low? Partly because the average Nigerian's economic productivity and income are low. We have a relatively small formal, taxable economy. Why is productivity low? Decades of underinvestment in the things that make people and businesses productive: education, infrastructure, electricity, healthcare, technology and access to capital. Why have we underinvested in these things? Corruption, poor institutions, bad incentives and decades of misallocation of public resources. And here's the interesting part: these problems reinforce each other. Low productivity means a smaller tax base. A smaller tax base means less money available for public investment. Poor public investment further reduces productivity. It's a vicious cycle. So when we talk about growing government revenue, we should also be talking about growing the productive capacity of Nigerians. And when we talk about corruption, we should talk about its opportunity cost: the roads that weren't built, the schools that weren't improved, the electricity that wasn't provided, and the businesses that never got the chance to scale. You can't solve Nigeria's revenue problem without addressing its productivity problem. And you cannot sustainably address its productivity problem without fixing the institutions responsible for public investment.

I've been following the conversations around fuel subsidies, and I think we're missing a very important part of the economic debate in Nigeria. We're spending too much time arguing about how much Nigerians should pay for energy and not nearly enough time discussing how much Nigerians should be able to earn. Let me explain. Whenever we compare fuel prices in Nigeria with those in the US or UK, someone inevitably points out that fuel prices and minimum wages in those countries are not comparable. And they're right. But I think that comparison should lead us to a bigger conversation about economic productivity. Economics is fundamentally about trade-offs. There is no perfect solution to an economic problem. There are costs and benefits, and policymakers have to decide where those costs should sit and how to distribute them. Take energy subsidies, for example. There is a reasonable argument for subsidising energy (petrol, diesel and electricity) to reduce production costs, make businesses more competitive and give citizens more purchasing power. But subsidies have a fiscal cost. They compete with other things the government could spend money on. On the other hand, removing subsidies increases the financial burden on households and businesses, particularly those already struggling to make ends meet. The government may have more fiscal room, but what happens to the average Nigerian who can no longer afford the cost of transportation, electricity or running a business? This is where I think our economic conversation is incomplete. I believe we need to work and chew gum at the same time. If government decides to remove or significantly reduce energy subsidies, it must be equally aggressive about making Nigerians more productive. And I don't mean just talking about GDP growth. I'm talking about increasing the average Nigerian's ability to earn money. Think about it. Nigeria has over 200 million people, yet our economic output per person remains relatively low compared with several African economies. We have a huge population, but population size alone doesn't translate into economic prosperity. So how do we make Nigerians more productive? There are both long-term and short-term interventions. Long-term: Improve the quality of our secondary schools. Invest in technical and vocational education. Improve the quality of our universities. Build infrastructure that makes businesses cheaper to operate. Short-term: Fund practical skills acquisition programmes. Pay for globally recognised professional certifications. Make access to digital skills and technical training easier. Help people transition into higher-paying industries. Create an environment where small businesses can grow and employ more people. We need to make it easier for Nigerians to acquire skills, create value and earn more money. Imagine an economy where more Nigerians earn enough to comfortably afford energy, transportation, housing and other essentials, while still having disposable income to spend on goods and services. That disposable income circulates through the economy. One person's spending becomes another person's revenue. Businesses grow, hire more people and create even more economic activity. That's how you build a stronger domestic economy. This is the part of the subsidy conversation I think deserves much more attention. We can debate whether energy should be subsidised, how much it should cost and how government should manage its fiscal responsibilities. But we cannot have that conversation in isolation from productivity. Keeping energy artificially cheap without addressing productivity is not a sustainable path to prosperity. And removing subsidies without deliberately improving people's ability to earn is equally incomplete. The real question shouldn't just be: "How do we make things cheaper for Nigerians?" It should also be: "How do we make Nigerians earn enough to afford the things they need?" Because ultimately, prosperity isn't just about reducing the cost of living. It's also about increasing the capacity of people to create value, earn money and participate meaningfully in the economy.

The problem first is the question. ₦100k isn't just a young person's salary. It's around the income level of a huge part of Lagos's working population. So yes, rents need to reflect what most people actually earn. But the state needs to learn to walk and chew gum. We need to increase housing supply while also massively improving productivity and incomes. The goal shouldn't be to teach people to live with low incomes. It should be to build a Lagos where the average person can earn ₦500k–₦1m and housing supply grows fast enough to keep rents affordable. Both things have to happen.

I agree with most of the points, but capping rent is always a no-no. The best thing to do is to do everything possible to increase supply. Faster approvals. Remove the bottlenecks around getting land and building approvals. Provide credit/tax incentives for developers, especially those building apartment blocks. Provide basic infrastructure in undeveloped areas so development can move there. Build more houses, not policies that make people build less.

MTN is slowly cannibalising the ISP business. First Fibre X. Then Radio solutions. Seems MTN is slowly transitioning into an internet-first business.