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As the world faces a global economic crisis, Nigeria, who has been in a precarious situation long before now is up against a mammoth of challenges, which if not swiftly and properly addressed, will result in another recession.

On Tuesday, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) convened its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting for July. At the end of the meeting, the MPC increases the Monetary Interest Rate by 100 basis points – 14 per cent, moving it up from 13 percent where it was raised in May.

The last quarter has seen the apex bank increasing the MPR twice to 250 basis points.

Rising inflation has forced the MPC, who previously held the MPR at 11.5 percent, to move it up by three percent in three months.

The Committee’s decision to tighten interest amidst rising global inflation is informed by the concern that loosening it will compound the already bad liquidity situation in the country, resulting in further depreciation of the naira.

“If inflation continues to rise at this rate, we will continue to tighten rate, but we are looking at other measures that will slow down inflation and food prices. But if that does not happen, we (MPC) cannot promise that rate hikes will stop,” CBN governor Godwin Emefiele said.

However, the MPC retained the asymmetric corridor at +100/-700 bps around the MPR, the cash reserve ratio at 27.50 percent; and the Liquidity Ratio held at 30.00 percent.

The CBN said the government needs take proactive measures to ease the pressure on the naira. The bank said the measures include curtailing raging insecurity in the country to help farmers get back to farms and addressing the pricing issue of petroleum products to end fuel scarcity.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Ltd has announced N197 per liter upward review of petroleum pump price, but fuel scarcity persists across the country.

Rising inflation is increasingly pushing Nigeria’s economy toward recession, and some analysts believe that it has gone beyond the control of the CBN.

The nation’s inflation rate has risen to 18.60 percent, according to the last figure declared by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics. Experts are concerned that the trend, if not urgently contained, will yield economic disaster for Nigeria.

The nation has been recording negative economic growth month-on-month since January, which means, the CBN has been recording inflation far and above the upper limit of its 6-9 percent target.

The analysts argue that only effective collaboration between the CBN, Federal Ministry of Finance, (FMoF) and Federal Ministry of Trade and Investments, (FMoT&I) could bring the country out of the mess.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Iran on Tuesday, creating a major dislocation in geopolitics. In this trip, he will meet (or has met) with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is also included. Simply, Russia and Iran are now one and only one.

“We are strengthening our cooperation on international security issues, making a significant contribution to the settlement of the Syrian conflict, ” Putin said in Tehran. The US dollar is also on the table: ‘He [Khamenei] said Putin had ensured Russia “maintained its independence” from the United States and expressed support for countries to start using their own national currencies when trading goods. “The U.S. dollar should be gradually taken off global trade, and this can be done gradually,” Khamenei said.’

This trip has a huge implication. Though the agenda will be on Syria, the implication is massive for the conflict in Ukraine. Largely, in Europe’s heartland, Iran now has an umbilical cord via Russia. If you are European Union, which one do you prefer? The Russia of old that was closer to Brussels or the emerging Russia with kindreds from Iran and China, in your homeland? A catalytic shift in the world order – and I boldly write that “things have indeed fallen apart”. 

That fall will affect Africa in many ways: for the next ten years, Europe will focus on rebuilding Ukraine and stabilizing it. Typically, after these wars, weapons morph into bad hands, causing problems for neighbours. As they confront those issues, Africa will likely be forgotten. So, if we want to take care of business, the continent needs to #plan now.

Russia’s relationship with Iran has alerted Western officials as he prepares to ramp up ground offensives in eastern Ukraine following his troops’ capture of the Luhansk region.

Recently declassified US intelligence indicates that Iran is expected to supply Russia with “hundreds” of drones — including weapons-capable drones — for use in the war in Ukraine, with Iran preparing to begin training Russian forces on how to operate them as early as late July, according to White House officials.

“Russia turning to Iran for the help speaks volumes about the degree to which both nations, for their actions into different areas of the world, have been increasingly isolated by the international community,” the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby told CNN last week.

Feedback on Social Media Feed

Comment: As you say “Africa will suffer this”, the first scenario that came to mind were the series of tuition free scholarships Africans enjoy every year in UK and European universities.

August 2nd, Chevening will open application, September Commonwealth will commence, DAAD and others will follow suite, I just imagined all these cancelled out for a moment. And this is just education.

My Response: Those scholarships are immaterial for geopolitics. All scholarships Europe gives African students may not exceed $10m in a year. In Ukraine, they could be spending $2 billion per month to keep it running. (Nigeria wastes $10 BILLION yearly on fuel subsidy) Leave the scholarship and focus on important elements.

Fictitious product reviews is becoming a wild social menace in the e-commerce ecosystem as unsuspecting brands face serious condemnation on questions of integrity by hundreds of thousands of their customers and clients. Amazon has recently decried the activities of some social media influencers and third party product pushers who are encouraging and making a killing from fictitious reviews of products listed on its platform. The US e-commerce giant also says it has been the target of these mongers for over five years now and it will be taking drastic legal actions against them.

According to a cyber-security news report on the technology express, Amazon has said it would be suing the admins of more than 10,000 Facebook groups, alleging that they encourage fraudulent evaluations of products on its website by offering cash or free goods in return for favourable comments.

The companies are reportedly in charge of posting false reviews on Amazon’s website in the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan. Over 43000 people purportedly belonged to only one of these groups, ‘’Amazon Product Reviews’’ the report shows.

It’s reported that although Amazon had earlier issued an official ban on incentivised reviews on its websites in October 2016, four years later in 2020, a Financial Times investigation found that as many as nine out of ten reviewers on its platform in the Uk were engaged in suspicious activity. The company says it has over 12,000 employees worldwide working to prevent fraud and abuse on its platform which includes fake reviews, and it’s reported over 10,000 fake reviews group to facebook owner Meta since 2020.

Amazon declares its position with adopting comprehensive methods including AI, data forensic and the criminal justice system to tackle the problem. The company says it uses a combination of advanced technology, expert investigators and continuous monitoring to detect fake reviews on its service, and over the past years it’s kicked hundreds of sellers off its platform for violating its policies including popular brands like RavPower and Aukey. It also adds it’s proactively stopped over 200 million suspected fake reviews in 2020.

‘’Our team stop million of suspicious reviews before they are ever seen by customers, and this law suit goes a step further to uncover perpetrators operating on social media’’ the Vice President of Amazon’s Selling Partners Services, Dharmesh Mehta reveals. He also says proactive legal action targeting bad actions is one of many ways Amazon protect its customers by holding bad actors accountable.