Author: Marcel Okeke

The airline business (and, indeed the aviation industry) in Nigeria is at present facing an existential threat – triggered by acute scarcity of foreign exchange (forex). Both foreign and local airlines operating in Nigeria practically have this proverbial sword of Damocles hanging round their necks. Aviation fuel (Jet-A1) price has gone through the roof, rising from merely two hundred naira per litre about a year ago to close to nine hundred naira a litre at present – underpinned by worsening scarcity of the product in Nigeria. To this lingering painful fuel scarcity will be added the nation’s persisting currency crisis…

As President Muhammadu Buhari-led federal government runs down the very last lap of its tenure, Nigeria’s public sector space is getting saturated with issues ranging from the absurd to the ridiculous. The raging controversy between the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited over who (between the two) was responsible for the continuing paucity of dollars and hence the plummeting of the exchange rate of the Naira, is one of such noisome features of this administration’s sunset period. Indeed, as the fiscal profile of the country gets drearier in the twilight of the administration,…

“We have undergone countless number of trainings in the past several months, but we have not been able to access these their loan facilities for the SMEs,” a key member of the National Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (NASME) in Lagos, complained bitterly, recently. This entrepreneur was really bemoaning what has become the fate of most micro, small and medium-sized business owners in Nigeria in recent times. A plethora of special loan facilities, each with different and specific conditionalities, are out there, but the potential beneficiaries are literally going through hell to secure these loans. ln many instances, the…