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Between bold is wise and wise is bold 08 Dec 2025

Nigeria faces challenging times. If there is a time for Nigerian pessimism, it could be now. If you listen to Nigerian political leaders, especially those in the ruling party, the tragic situation does not appear so. But if you paid even a cursory attention to happenings in Nigeria, you would know the country is in a terrible shape. The economy is either in tatters or stagnant. Nigeria’s productivity is declining while its expenditure is increasing geometrically. GDP per capita has dropped; inflation, though controlled, remains quite high, and Nigeria now has the lowest quality of life in the world, according to expert estimation. Poverty has increased. Today, about 57% of Nigerians live in extreme poverty. More than 70% of Nigerians are in acute poverty and deprivation. 

The poverty trap is not as bad as the conflict trap, and both reinforce themselves. Nigeria is high on the fragility index, 15th out of 178 countries in 2024. It should be worse now. Fragility rating does not fully capture the nature of state failure in Nigeria. There are many ungoverned spaces in the country where terror groups raise taxes and even administer justice in trapped communities. Nigeria’s state ineffectiveness came to full glare when terrorists ambushed Nigerian soldiers. A general was stranded in the forest and could not be rescued before the terrorists brutally killed him. Nigeria is so weak that it cannot defeat ragtag terrorists and bandits terrorising its communities. The country pays bandits and terrorists to release kidnapped school children. 

When a country is this terrible, citizens clamour for bold actions. But oftentimes bold actions become foolish actions that worsen the conditions of existence. That is probably where we are in Nigeria. And this is not new. During the early years of economic decline, when deficit terms of trade caused by boom and bust of commodity trading launched African economies into an economic decline, some experts recommended what they called a bold reform agenda: ‘Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP)’, which required drastic divestment in the provision of social services like education and health, and privatisation of public enterprises. These bad policies were packaged as ‘bold measures’ that would save these economies. In the end, the measures collapsed these economies and dragged them deeper into depression and stagnation. 

The selling point for these bad policies was that Africa was in a terminal decline and needed shock therapy. Nobody needed to review and assess the proposed intervention. No one needed to contextualise implementation. As the likes of Jeffrey Sachs counselled then, it was better to rush through reforms so that the vested interests do not have time to push back. So, Africa was put through shock therapy that collapsed the economy and worsened its economic predicament. 

In matters of economic reform and political governance, we need to note the difference between bold and wise. Asia noted that difference, and there is a clear difference in outcomes. From Japan to Korea to China to Taiwan, each of the Asian leadership departed from the logic of ‘bold is wise’ and rather accepted that ‘wise is bold’. These leaders were wise to query the advisories from academic economists resident at the global financial institutions and found the way through sober reflection on the histories of their countries. Japan departed from the neoliberal orthodoxy and followed the model of the developmental state. Japan carried out its bold reforms. But their merit is not that they were bold. Rather, these were wise policies that were phased in according to the evolving context of Japanese society. 

It was the same with South Korea. Its leaders built on the developmental model and tailored it to align with the socioeconomic realities of Korean society. General Park was authoritarian but rejected the reckless advice of the World Bank and the IMF. He did not follow the cookbook of the Japanese economic miracle. He adopted the general obsession with techno-industrialisation. Whereas Japan had its sole agency, MITI, Korea had its own Economic Planning Board. But Korea departed from the Japanese model and structured business-government relations in a manner that aligned with its context and led to success. The same with Taiwan, which made a drastic departure from the Korean and Japanese models, relying less on private enterprises and more on public enterprises.

The point is that Asia prospered by paying attention to context and by not mistaking bold for wise. In the 1980s, African economies collapsed because of reckless policies packaged as brave policies. Today, the Nigerian government boasts that it is implementing “bold reforms” characterised, in the main, by the expansion of inequality and an increase in the cost of living through inflation and drastic devaluation of Nigerian currency. The drastic devaluation of the naira is justified as part of getting factor and commodity prices right. The argument is that this will remove the distortion in the macroeconomics and enable fast growth. Meanwhile, the country has one of the highest numbers of poor people in the world. Nigeria has an unproductive economy dependent on natural resources, with little value addition. What is the benefit of a massive devaluation of currency for a country that imports and does not export? What is the great benefit of matching drastic currency devaluation with massive removal of subsidies for energy products in a country with no social protection and low household income?

President Tinubu's economic policies may read well in the books of economic hitmen. But they are not wise applications of economic principles to real-world situations – the Nigerian situations. It is interesting to note that the Japanese economic miracle did not come from academic economists. The MITI had none of them at its helm from the 1920s to the 1970s, during the height of the miracle. One reason is that academic economists would be bold but unwise. 

Sam Amadi, PhD, a former Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, is the Director of Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts.