A nation’s economic debate is often like a crowded control room during turbulence. Everyone is shouting readings from different instruments, few are calibrated, and even fewer understand what the aircraft is actually doing. In such moments, authority is not claimed by volume, but by the ability to interpret data without panic or bias. The piece by Temitope Ajayi, published on April 17, 2026, in The Cable, attempts to do the opposite. It replaces interpretation with indignation and substitutes analytical engagement with reputational excavation in its critique of Pat Utomi.
The core of Ajayi’s argument is simple but flawed. It asserts that Utomi’s critique of Nigeria’s ongoing reforms under Bola Ahmed Tinubu lacks moral and intellectual credibility due to his past corporate associations, political inconsistencies, and perceived overreliance on comparative economic references. This is not an economic argument. It is a narrative framing exercise that confuses biography with causality.
In political economy, this is a fundamental error. Systems are evaluated through structural outcomes, not through the perceived personal trajectory of commentators. To mistake the messenger for the model is like blaming the weather forecaster for the rain.
Ajayi opens with a caricature of Utomi as a self-styled intellectual blending Einstein, Smith, and Keynes. This rhetorical exaggeration is not analysis. It is atmospheric noise. It says more about the emotional tone of the writer than the validity of the critique being dismissed. Serious economic discourse does not begin with mockery. It begins with variables, constraints, and observed outcomes.
Now to substance.
Utomi’s central argument in his recent interventions is not opposition to reform. It is concern about sequencing, transmission lag, and welfare absorption capacity in Nigeria’s adjustment process. These are standard concepts in development economics. When a country removes subsidies, unifies exchange rates, and liberalises prices simultaneously in a structurally fragile economy, the result is not immediate equilibrium. It is transitional volatility.
This is not ideology. It is adjustment theory.
Consider subsidy removal. Economically, it corrects a long-standing fiscal distortion that drained public resources and encouraged arbitrage networks. On this point, Ajayi is broadly aligned with orthodox macroeconomic thinking. But economics does not end at correctness of direction. It evaluates transition dynamics.
In Nigeria’s case, subsidy removal triggered a sharp price level adjustment. Inflation accelerated, particularly in food and transport components of the CPI basket. Real wages declined faster than nominal fiscal savings improved. In lay economic terms, the adjustment curve was steep rather than gradual. This is what Utomi is pointing to, not the necessity of reform itself.
Exchange rate unification follows the same logic. Multiple FX windows created inefficiencies and rent seeking opportunities. Their consolidation improves price discovery. However, in economies with low export elasticity and import dependent production structures, unification produces immediate pass through inflation. The naira depreciation observed post reform is consistent with this transmission mechanism. Again, the issue is not direction but timing and cushioning.
Now to Ajayi’s attempt to undermine Utomi through corporate history, specifically BankPHB and Volkswagen of Nigeria.
Here the argument collapses under institutional analysis.
BankPHB did not fail as an isolated intellectual experiment. It was part of the 2009 Nigerian banking sector crisis, a systemic event that led to Central Bank intervention and widespread recapitalisation. The crisis involved multiple institutions including Intercontinental Bank, Oceanic Bank, and others, all of which suffered from similar structural weaknesses.
Importantly, Utomi assumed chairmanship of the board at BankPHB after Kola Abiola’s tenure. His role was within a governance structure already embedded in a fragile sector architecture characterised by non performing insider related loans, weak risk controls, and exposure to volatile margin lending practices tied to oil price cycles. In systemic risk terms, this is correlated failure, not individual causation. To isolate a board level actor as primary explanatory variable is to confuse micro participation with macro collapse.
Volkswagen of Nigeria requires a similar correction of narrative.
Utomi served as Chief Operating Officer and briefly as Chief Executive Officer in a period when Nigeria’s automobile assembly industry was undergoing structural stress. After his tenure, management shifted to German CEOs, reflecting attempts at technical restructuring. The broader context, however, is essential.
Nigeria’s automotive sector was operating under the constraints of Structural Adjustment Program era trade liberalisation, foreign exchange scarcity, and weak local content integration. Completely Knocked Down assembly systems, known as CKD operations, depend heavily on stable FX access and predictable industrial policy. In Nigeria, both were inconsistent. Imported components became increasingly expensive due to currency volatility, while local supply chains remained underdeveloped. The result was declining competitiveness of domestic assembly operations.
This is not a leadership morality tale. It is an industrial economics case study.
Ajayi’s deeper claim is that Utomi lacks practical credibility because he references comparative economies such as South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and Chile. This argument misunderstands the function of comparative political economy.
South Korea’s industrialisation was not a cultural miracle. It was a coordinated state led industrial policy supported by export discipline and credit allocation through developmental banking structures. Singapore’s success was anchored on institutional predictability, anti corruption enforcement, and export logistics integration. Malaysia’s trajectory combined resource management with manufacturing diversification. Chile’s reforms blended market liberalisation with fiscal discipline and institutional consolidation.
These are not ornamental references. They are empirical benchmarks used to evaluate whether policy design aligns with tested development pathways. Rejecting comparative analysis is equivalent to rejecting epidemiology because diseases differ across populations.
Ajayi further frames Utomi’s critique as politically motivated inconsistency, suggesting he only speaks out when politically dissatisfied. This is a familiar rhetorical device in Nigerian commentary, but it does not engage economic substance. Policy evaluation is not invalidated by perceived timing. It is validated or invalidated by coherence with observed macroeconomic outcomes.
On current reforms, the empirical picture is mixed, not binary.
Fiscal indicators show improvement in revenue mobilisation and FAAC allocations. However, inflation remains elevated, real income contraction persists, and consumption volatility is high. External reserves stability has improved, but import cost pressures remain significant. These are not contradictions. They are typical characteristics of early-stage adjustment in emerging economies.
In political economy terms, Nigeria is experiencing what is known as a J curve adjustment effect. Initial contraction in welfare is followed by potential stabilisation if productivity responses materialise. The unresolved question is whether institutional capacity and industrial expansion will be sufficient to complete the curve upward.
This is precisely where Utomi’s critique is analytically relevant. It is not opposition to reform. It is interrogation of whether the transmission pathway from macro stability to micro welfare is functioning effectively.
Ajayi’s argument avoids this question entirely. Instead, it reframes disagreement as personal failure and intellectual vanity. This is not analysis. It is rhetorical substitution.
There is a final conceptual flaw in the “take a back seat” framing. In democratic political economy, intellectual participation is not conditional on approval by policy actors. Ideas are not retired by decree. They are tested against evidence. If they fail, they are discarded through reasoning, not dismissal.
To demand silence from critics while defending reform is to misunderstand the nature of policy legitimacy. Stability is not achieved by removing dissent. It is achieved by engaging it rigorously.
To close, consider a different analogy.
An economy undergoing reform is like a large cargo vessel navigating a narrow channel during rising tides. Some observers study engine performance, others monitor cargo balance, and others warn about underwater currents. The captain who dismisses warnings because he disagrees with the tone of the observer risks running aground not due to lack of direction, but due to lack of attentiveness.
Ajayi’s piece, for all its rhetorical confidence, mistakes disagreement for irrelevance. But in complex economic systems, disagreement is not noise. It is often the earliest signal that the model being followed still has unresolved variables.
Mr Aliyu is a Kaduna- based economist and policy analyst and can be reached at aliyuabdulrauf@gmail.com
