Prudence is designed to make financial systems safer. Higher capital buffers, stricter underwriting, stronger compliance, and clearer rules all serve one aim: reduce the chance that shocks become crises. Prudence has a shadow cost: when imposed abruptly, uniformly, or without regard to transmission, it can shrink the economy it intends to protect. Nigeria’s financial reset…
Read more
Nigeria’s financial system is changing. It faces a major regulatory reset across banking, capital markets, fintech, FX intermediation, and cash usage. The trend is clear: higher capital, tighter compliance, clearer rules, and more market-based pricing, especially in foreign exchange. Officially, the goal is stability. In reality, it is during the adjustment phase that risk is…
Read more
For decades, Nigeria’s monetary policy operated in a hybrid space—part rules, part discretion—constrained by fiscal dominance, exchange-rate pressures, and deep structural inflation drivers. Monetary decisions were often shaped as much by administrative controls, directed credit, and quasi-fiscal objectives as by price stability. That framework is now changing. In recent years, the Central Bank of Nigeria…
Read more
When central banks lower policy rates or governments deploy countercyclical fiscal stimulus, the standard transmission narrative is well known: the cost of capital declines, intertemporal substitution favors present consumption, risk appetite increases, private investment accelerates, and aggregate demand recovers. Monetary easing should relax financial conditions and spur balance-sheet expansion. Fiscal transfers and spending should smooth…
Read more
