The FDI kerfuffle: Reorienting the way youths think about the economy, By ‘Tope Fasua
It’s almost uncanny that when I get thinking about an issue around the economy lately, events conspire to push such matters to the front burner of public discourse.
It’s almost uncanny that when I get thinking about an issue around the economy lately, events conspire to push such matters to the front burner of public discourse. This time, it is about the matter of investment. Nairametrics’ take on the subject matter has got many pundits – in and out of government – chiming in with their perspective. For me, I see the issue from a slightly different, even if significant perspective. Some weeks back, I put a call through to a smart officer of our bureau for statistics, asking him how the investment function is captured in the calculation of Gross Domestic Product. The GDP as we well know, is typically calculated as C+1+G+Nx (meaning that Consumption, Investment, Government Expenditure (less Taxes), and net Export, are key considerations to this method of working out the size and direction of an economy. My main concern which led to that call, was that I felt we weren’t taking Domestic Investment as seriously as we should – or we weren’t giving that important factor the prominence it deserves (especially for a growing, largely informal economy). I will explain shortly.
First, let us look at the ongoing brouhaha around Foreign Direct Investment into Nigeria. Nairametrics pointed out that of the $10 billion attracted as foreign investment into Nigeria in Q1 2026, $6.5 billion went into Treasury Bills investment. Valid. They further pointed out that f the $45 billion that came in as investments in the year 2025, $13 billion went into money market instruments, evidence that foreign investors were only interested in dealing with Nigeria with a long spoon while maxing out their returns for the short term. Also valid. Nairametrics then stated the obvious, that Nigeria should be seeking are investments that help to ‘build factories, hire workers, transfer technology and deliver long-term value’. Agreed. But this is where the naivety shows. Or is it just plain old voyeurism. Whereas it is easier to sit outside of government and point out ways of doing everything better like it was easy, I personally have a lot of respect for Nairametrics because it is not one of the more frivolous or partisan platforms. My intervention here is therefore to call Ugodre and the platform to a more elevated stance and to understand that they cannot afford to plough the depths like some other analysts are wont to do. A go-to financial and economic analysis platform can also be helped by the rest of us to get better and stay the course, for a better Nigeria.
I needed a terminology to address the type of analysis that has become popular in Nigeria today, what with a growing number of popular influencers and self-ordained economists. No matter anyone’s position or a policy matter, there is a tendency for these analysts to simply latch on to the likely disadvantage of a policy and to construct a doomsday scenario simply made of material from the downsides. Equally, those in support of policies are warned not to only present the upsides. In my public outings I have had to remind viewers that the best that can be achieved from a policy outcome is pareto-efficiency; where 80 per cent of the people benefit while 20 per cent may actually be worse off. When inflation crashed in 2025, with food prices across the board taking the hit, many farmers besieged my WhatsApp, complaining bitterly about government import of grains – even though prices went down on almost all food crops. I appealed to them for patience, but also pointed out that for me, since 90 per cent of Nigerians were non-farmers, I believe that policy had had a good outcome. Nigerians needed relief from the food price spikes of 2023 and 2024.
I asked AI to help me with a name for this now-popular form of analysis and it came up with the below:
When an analyst or debater focuses solely on the disadvantages while ignoring the advantages of a policy, they are engaging in one-sidedness or cherry-picking. In policy analysis, this can manifest through specific rhetorical or logical fallacies:
Cherry-Picking (or the Fallacy of Incomplete Evidence): Selectively focusing only on facts, figures, or consequences that support an argument while intentionally ignoring contradictory evidence.
Appeal to Consequences (Argumentum ad Consequentiam): Attempting to prove a policy is wrong solely by emphasising its negative outcomes rather than evaluating its actual merits.
Negativity Bias: A cognitive bias where individuals disproportionately pay more attention to and give more weight to negative information or potential drawbacks.
In academic and professional environments, policy analysis is ideally a balanced procedure. Analysts are tasked with conducting Policy analysis to systematically evaluate all alternatives and their consequences, rather than just the drawbacks. When evaluating any argument, relying only on disadvantages without weighing them against the pros can be classified as a Logical fallacy because it creates a distorted view of the policy’s true impact.
This is the first major flaw that the respected platform made in the analysis it put out on Fforeign investment flows into Nigeria. There are more, as will be discussed below.
As mentioned earlier, there is the critical flaw of feigning naivety around the current realities of the global economy. Where does one start from? Mr Trump has been single-mindedly pursuing a policy of protectionism in a bid to save the American economy. He has reason to because the American economy was/is dying. He muscled the world to wrestle back some economic power, imposed crazy tariffs on sundry allies in a move that is reminiscent of pre-Great Depression/World War II beggar thy neighbour policies. His target was China in the main, but every country felt the pinch. On many occasion, Trump has assembled some of America’s biggest entrepreneurs in the oval office, and extracted commitments from them, literally at ‘gunpoint’. Some of them shivered as they muttered how much more investments they were going to bring back into the US. Mr Trump’s latest move was a charm offensive to China, as it got more obvious that the bullying may not be achieving the full effect – or perhaps that the Chinese were far gone. Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada brought up another concept at the last Davos meeting in January 2026, when he spoke about ‘Middle Powers’ coming together as their own force against the US, and perhaps to continue the asymmetric subjugation (through trade), of non-powers – like Nigeria. I wrote on this new reality on this page some time back.
