Once in a while, I come across a statistic that lives rent-free in my mind.
Recently, some might have seen me overuse a couple. The first being that the Nigerian living standards are the same today as they were in 1980. And the second one is an estimate of over $600 billion that politicians have stolen since our independence.
Five months ago, I came across another one that changed how I think about Nigeria:
“If annual inflation is 15%, the value of the currency halves every six years.”
I found it in an article by Michael, the Chief Economist at Stears, and he was illustrating how investing in Nigeria’s stock market could lead to tears. Double-digit inflation could wipe out any returns, he correctly argued.
But what hit me from the article was the statistic about the value of the naira halving. So I did a check using Nigeria’s figures.
