Bin that strategy document for 2026, it is already stale

If you still have those elaborate “Strategy 2026” slides from your year-end retreats, do yourself a favor: throw them in the bin.

They are stale, irrelevant, and frankly, dangerous to hold onto.

The world has shifted on its axis, and the dimension we are moving into requires a total redraft of expectations.

I remember our early Drinks and Mics sessions where we sat around and debated the year ahead. We agreed then that the overriding theme for 2026 would be Geopolitics. At the time, it felt like a safe, intellectual bet. Today, it’s a brutal reality.

Back then, we called for a 70% return on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX), betting on declining inflation and the eventual scope for rate cuts.

That play was looking solid until the first missiles flew. Now, unless the US-Iran conflict finds a ceasefire that actually sticks (beyond the fragile whispers we’re hearing about the Hormuz Straits), every asset class is being repriced.

Sam, “The Oracle,” made the call that felt like a hedge but turned out to be the prophecy: 2026 is the Year of Oil, Hydrocarbons, and Gas.

The escalation between the US and Iran hasn’t just nudged the price of a barrel; it has fundamentally fractured the global energy nervous system. We aren’t looking at a temporary price hike; we are witnessing a synchronized failure across refining, extraction, maritime logistics, and terminal distribution.

This isn’t a light switch you can just flip back on once the missiles stop flying.

Global energy infrastructure is an ocean liner, not a speedboat; restarting it is a gruelling, capital-intensive process that requires the stability the world no longer possesses.

Look at the damage done to Qatar that would take years to restore, or how soon can you build back energy storage? 18-24 months? We have a serious lag that is yet to play out fully.

Europe serves as a grim masterclass in what happens when political virtue-signalling outpaces mechanical reality. For a decade, the continent pursued a “Net Zero” agenda with a zealotry that bordered on the suicidal. They didn’t just transition; they demolished.

They decommissioned world-class refining capacity and mothballed nuclear baseloads, most notably Germany’s decision to kill its nuclear fleet in the teeth of a supply crisis. It was a spectacular act of strategic self-harm.

The unspoken premise of European policy was that the global market would always be a polite, reliable neighbor willing to fill the gap between their green ambitions and their physical needs.

That neighbor has moved out. Now, the very nations that once orchestrated global trade through colonial might find themselves as “sitting ducks,” unable to secure the fuel required to keep their lights on at a sane price. There is a profound, almost poetic irony in seeing former empires rendered immobile because they forgot that moral authority cannot power a blast furnace.

Canada mirrors this decline. It is a nation essentially “sitting on a goldmine” but spending its energy convincing the world it has no interest in digging. By shackling its vast resource wealth in a web of regulatory purgatory and political hesitation, it has left itself dangerously exposed.

The harsh truth of 2026 is this: Soft power is a hallucination without hard capability. Western powers are learning, with agonizing slowness, that being “right” on paper is no substitute for being “sovereign” in energy.

If Germany doesn’t stop over-intellectualizing its decline and start aggressively recycling its surpluses into industrial and energy hardware, the window will slam shut. The era of treating energy policy as a philosophical debate is dead. It’s time for math, or it’s time for the dark.

”Yakubu Manage” is not a policy response: Bringing it home, using the aviation industry as a case study

In Nigeria, Jet A1 fuel went from N900 to over N3,000 per litre in the blink of an eye. That’s not a “price adjustment”; it’s an industry-wide cardiac arrest.

Right now, fuel is 40% of an airline’s costs. When the government tells operators to just “endure” or “manage,” they are basically telling them to go bankrupt quietly.

Other countries are suspending taxes and levies to give airlines breathing room. *Note the word: Taxes, not Subsidies. Nigerians love the “S” word, but subsidies are a trap.* Suspending a tax is finite, clean, and fast. It doesn’t require bravery; it just requires a brain. If the current government team can’t figure that out, we need a new team that can think beyond distributing rice and beans.

The diesel story is quietly gutting our economy. SMEs have no choice; they run on generators. When diesel spikes, their margins evaporate instantly.

Big manufacturers are currently “chilling” on old gas contracts (some as low as N200/kWh), but that won’t last. When their suppliers realize they are losing money honoring those old prices, expect “contract breaches” or repricing to become the order of the day – I kent kee myself!!.

Then there is the haulage nightmare. The average Nigerian truck is 15+ years old. These ancient “diesel guzzlers” use twice the fuel of a modern truck. We are trying to run a modern economy on a fleet of museum pieces that we can no longer afford to fuel.

How much more can the consumer take?

Underneath all the fancy talk about “Current Account Dynamics” is a Nigerian consumer who has been punched in the gut for three straight years. They’ve swallowed the subsidy removal, the Naira float, and high interest rates. They were promised a “normalization” that has now been hijacked by a war in the Middle East.

The “powder keg” metaphor is a cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason. People’s patience isn’t infinite. It runs out when they feel like the pain is one-sided and the government is just watching from the sidelines.

We can’t stop the US-Iran war, but we can stop being “sitting ducks.” We need:

The political class needs to wake up. The distance between a “tough year” and “total chaos” is much shorter than it looks from a fancy office in Abuja.

Our government needs to stop thinking in terms of “Rice and Beans” palliatives. Handouts are a sedative, not a solution. We need aggressive, creative fiscal interventions, think temporary tax holidays on energy inputs, not the murky, corruption-prone subsidies of the past.

If the current administrative teams cannot pivot from “theorizing” to “executing” in this high-stakes environment, they are a liability. We are in a pre-election year, and the Nigerian consumer is a dry forest waiting for a spark.

Governor Cardoso and the CBN have no choice: they must tighten liquidity. Watch the oil, because the oil is watching us.