Editor’s Note

Following the publication of Literacy Is Not the Problem, a response to Wale Ogunbanjo’s article Before We Argue: The Need for Economic Literacy, the original author requested an opportunity to reply.

The response below argues that several criticisms made in the rejoinder are directed at positions that were never expressed in the original article. The author contends that his argument was not that citizens should agree with government policy, but that productive debate benefits from a shared understanding of basic economic concepts, regardless of where one ultimately stands on a particular issue.

Readers may notice that the disagreement between the two articles extends beyond specific points of interpretation. To some extent, the authors are addressing different aspects of a much broader conversation. The original article focused on the quality of economic discourse and the value of economic literacy in public debate. The rejoinder focused primarily on questions of governance, accountability, policy implementation, and the lived consequences of economic reforms. While these subjects overlap, they are not necessarily the same argument.

As a result, part of the exchange centres on whether the original article has been accurately characterised, while another part reflects a difference in emphasis about what deserves the greatest attention in Nigeria’s current circumstances. One writer asks how citizens can better understand economic policies before judging them; the other asks whether government performance and accountability should take precedence in the discussion.

We are publishing this response in the interest of giving readers the opportunity to consider both perspectives and to judge the arguments for themselves. Public debate is often most valuable not when participants agree, but when disagreements help clarify the questions being asked.

As this exchange has now progressed through the original article, a substantial rejoinder, and a subsequent reply, Ota News does not presently intend to publish further responses on this specific debate unless they introduce significant new evidence or materially new arguments.

Dear Anonymous Writer,

Thank you for your rejoinder to my article, Before We Argue: The Need for Economic Literacy.

After carefully studying your response, a pattern becomes apparent. Much of your rebuttal addresses claims that I never made. In several instances, positions are attributed to me that are absent from the article itself. The result is a series of misrepresentations, false attributions, and strawman arguments.

Rather than engage with the article as written, the rebuttal often appears to engage with a reconstructed version of it. I believe it is important to highlight these instances so that readers can judge both contributions on the basis of what was actually said rather than what was inferred.

Here are some examples:

You: “It diagnoses Nigeria’s problem as a shortage of economic literacy among ordinary citizens.”

Me: I never diagnosed Nigeria’s national problem as economic illiteracy. My article argued that economic illiteracy is one reason many economic debates become unproductive: “One striking feature of public debate in Nigeria … is that debates often begin before agreement on basic facts and concepts.” There is a significant difference between identifying a weakness in public discourse and claiming it is the country’s principal problem.

You: “The clear suggestion being that their dissatisfaction with government is a function of insufficient understanding.”

Me: I never said dissatisfaction with government results from insufficient understanding. My article explicitly stated that a citizen who understands economics may still oppose a policy. My concern was not dissatisfaction itself but the quality of the debate surrounding that dissatisfaction.

You: “It is a wide-barrelled instrument for converting any objection, from any quarter, into evidence of ignorance.”

Me: I wrote the exact opposite: “A citizen who understands economics may still oppose a policy. But the disagreement becomes productive.”

An article that explicitly validates informed disagreement cannot simultaneously be accused of treating all disagreement as ignorance.

You: “To recast a political grievance as an intellectual deficiency…”

Me: I never described political grievances as intellectual deficiencies. I argued that understanding should precede judgment: “Understanding economics does not mean agreeing with government. It means understanding what problem government claims to solve before judging whether the solution works.”

A grievance may be entirely legitimate and still benefit from a proper understanding of the economics involved.

You: “Structural adjustment programmes were blamed on populations too unsophisticated to grasp macroeconomic necessity.”

Me: My article made no reference to Structural Adjustment Programmes and never argued that citizens should accept policies simply because economists or governments support them. Again, my position was clear: “Understanding economics does not mean agreeing with government.”

You: “A citizen may grasp exactly how a fuel subsidy works and still concludes that removing it is unjust.”

Me: Exactly. That is precisely what I wrote.

“This illustration does not prove subsidy removal is right or wrong. It helps establish a shared understanding and can help ask the right questions.”

What is presented here as a rebuttal is, in fact, one of the central propositions of my article.

You: “The essay installs one market-oriented framework as literacy.”

Me: I never argued that citizens must adopt any particular school of economic thought. My examples were intended to explain concepts such as incentives, trade-offs, scarcity, pricing, and subsidy. Understanding those concepts does not commit anyone to a market-oriented, socialist, Keynesian, developmentalist, or any other economic ideology.

You: “The essay asks us merely to understand rather than demand.”

Me: False. Understanding and demanding accountability are not mutually exclusive. In fact, citizens are better equipped to demand accountability when they understand the concepts, assumptions, costs, benefits, and trade-offs underlying public policy.

You: “The essay quietly normalises government actions.”

Me: The article did not defend any government, political party, or individual politician. In fact, no government official was named.

The article discussed economic concepts and the need to distinguish facts from opinions before engaging in policy debates. Indeed, it explicitly called for greater public education by government:

“Economic literacy cannot spread by accident. When governments announce reform policies without explaining the reasoning behind them, the ensuing debate descends into anger and suspicion — citizens are told what will happen, but not why it is necessary or how it is expected to work.”

You: “The essay implies that if only citizens understood, they would agree.”

Me: I never made such a claim. On the contrary, I repeatedly acknowledged that understanding does not guarantee agreement:

“Nations do not prosper by eliminating disagreement. They prosper by improving its quality. Nigeria does not need fewer arguments. It needs better ones.”

My position was that understanding improves the quality of disagreement.

You: “The essay is devastating to accountability.”

Me: Accountability requires understanding. If citizens do not understand what governments are doing, they cannot effectively evaluate whether policies succeeded, failed, were poorly implemented, or served the public interest.

You: “The essay speaks in the voice of a disinterested analyst while actually defending government policy.”

Me: The article deliberately avoided taking positions on whether particular policies were right or wrong. Its purpose was educational, not partisan. The rebuttal repeatedly infers policy support where none was expressed.

You: “A genuinely neutral essay would have asked what literacy demands of government.”

Me: The article was not written about government obligations. It was written about public understanding of economic concepts. Criticising an article for not discussing an entirely different subject is not a rebuttal of its central argument. In fact, the article did address what literacy demands of government: _”1) Before major policy changes, governments should explain basic concepts in plain language — on radio, television, social media, town halls, and in school curricula. 2) Governments should admit uncertainty and trade-offs openly. 3) Governments should fund independent economic education — not propaganda.”

You: “The problem in Nigeria is not that citizens argue before they understand.”

Me: This is not a rebuttal but a disagreement over emphasis. Nigeria can simultaneously suffer from governance failures, corruption, weak institutions, poor implementation, and poor-quality economic discourse. My article never claimed these challenges were mutually exclusive.

In Closing

I welcome factual criticism and contrary opinions. Indeed, disagreement was one of the themes of my article.

However, meaningful disagreement requires engagement with what was actually written, not with positions inferred, imagined, or attributed after the fact.

The strongest irony in the rebuttal is that several of its principal counterarguments — particularly the proposition that a citizen may understand a policy and still oppose it — are propositions that my article explicitly endorsed.

Readers can judge for themselves whether the rebuttal is responding to my article or to a different article altogether.