Nigerian tobacco industry operates within an oligopolistic market structure, with BAT owning 79% of market brands, which allows for price differentiation across brands. However, price variations are also observed between the same brand both within and across regions, which suggests non-market factors could also contribute to the variability. For instance, the sale of cigarettes in sticks and the significant distance between production hubs and retail points, which generates asymmetric information, transportation cost and opportunity for arbitrage.

This study develops a comparable Human Development Index for subnational government in Nigeria. While built on the UNDP approach, we extend the generic framework to address challenges at the subnational level such as comparable indicator, data unavailability, and estimation technique. The result shows a wide disparity across states in their human development, with states within the southern region recording more impressive performance. We further examine the key economic and political drivers of the observed variations across the state and found fiscal sustainability and geopolitical zoning as the key determinants.

Nigeria confronts a prolonged period of adjustment. For more than a generation, the oil sector generated large volumes of foreign exchange. However, with the recent bust in global oil prices and the resumed restiveness in the oil rich Niger-Delta region since 2014, Nigeria was thrust into macroeconomic crisis. Nearly four years on, we argue that policymakers effectively responded to the dual shocks mainly through import compression. However, the scope for continued import compression is now distinctly limited. For Nigeria to grow and prosper, the long-discussed diversification of the export base must occur via rapid expansion of non-oil exports.

The recent movements in the dollar-naira exchange rate, following the removal of the currency peg, has stimulated ongoing debate in the media that South Africa has regained its position as the largest economy in Africa. The prevailing notion is that the depreciation of the naira and simultaneous appreciation of the rand against the US dollar implies that South Africa’s GDP has surpassed that of Nigeria. However, this argument needs some re-examination, given that the value of the GDP (in current US$) is sensitive to the choice of exchange rate and GDP figures used for its computation. This piece situates the present argument in the context of recent commodity market crisis and its implications for the two largest economies in Sub-Saharan Africa