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Introduction

Welcome to a New Year!

With most of December fading away, a New Year can finally begin.

In this post, I intend to look at happenings in the country as they occurred this week.

One thing last year showed was that bad governance will kill everyone.

Without much ado, here is what went down in Nigeria in the past week.

JAMB Registration

I sincerely believe that in 2020 it is possible to design processes and systems without the need to “See Somebody”.

Sadly, the nature of government agencies in Nigeria make processes unusually harder than they need to be.

It’s like Nigerians want to win the “Sufferhead Olympics”.

For some reason, JAMB made the use of the National Identification Number compulsory for the examination.

The result of this policy is shown below:

In the resulting chaos at the NIMC offices around the country, people started bribing the security agents to allow them in.

That is the effect of badly designed systems. When they break as they often will, you need human interference to keep them working.

Instead of the government asking the banks to handle this process, they insisted on creating bottlenecks for corruption to thrive.

A sad reminder that in Rwanda all processes are digital. They have a system called IremboGov which is a portal for all government processes.

When the clamor got too much, JAMB would rescind the decision making all the stress for nothing.

Increase in Electricity Tariffs

When I wrote my Top 10 Predictions for 2020, I frankly expected that taxation and inflation would increase.

However, I didn’t see why electricity tariffs would increase for electricity.

Word on the streets is that NERC has approved increase in electricity tariffs.

The comic below is from the Punch Newspaper:

Regardless of the measures put in place, service delivery will not improve.

I have no confidence in the ability of the current administration to deliver on this.

Loan to Deposit Ratio at 65%

To stimulate growth in the economy, the CBN increased the Loan to Deposit Ratio to 65%.

Banks have been fined for failing to meet this ratio.

Personally, I won’t borrow money from a bank to invest in this economy.

Conclusion

As the year gets into full swing, I would advice everyone reading this blog to refrain from investing in the Nigerian economy.

You can send your funds offshore.

Policies are now implemented in Nigeria with no thought as to their consequences.

Such a system of governance makes political uncertainty a reality.

Do have a great week.

Bad governance will kill everyone.

Introduction

I live in Lagos, Nigeria the poverty capital of the world.

This year, I decided to study Financial Mathematics.

I am an Engineer with a BSc in Systems Engineering from the University of Lagos.

My decision to study Financial Mathematics stems from the knowledge that to solve a problem, I must thoroughly understand it.

Programming with Python

Whilst reading the book An Undergraduate Introduction to Financial Mathematics I realized that the formulas where jumping over my head.

Besides, its been a long time since I have done any Mathematics.

So I decided to write the compounding formula as a program. You can find the program below:

# Print out the purpose of the program
print("This program computes the compound amount using monthly compounding")
print("Reference: An Undergraduate Introduction to Financial Mathematics (Page 3)\n")

# Ask the user for the principal amount
principal = float(input("Please enter the principal amount: "))

# Ask the user for the rate as a percentage
rate = float(input("Please enter the rate: "))

# Ask the user for the number of years as a decimal value
years = float(input("Please enter the number of years as a decimal value: "))

# Compute the compound amount (Page 3)
r_n = rate / (12 * 100)
nt = years * 12
factor = (1 + r_n) ** nt
compound_amount = principal * factor
print("\nThe compound amount is:", round(compound_amount, 2))

In doing so, I have a ready made program that I can use to solve the exercises in the book without having to use a calculator.

Conclusion

The essence of code is to replace human rigour and tedium.

In creating this program, I had to study the formula and come up with my own program.

Now I understand the formula.

You can also find it on GitHub.