Wednesday, March 4, 2026
This is not a normal week in global markets.
The United States and Israel have launched military strikes against Iran. Brent crude has spiked sharply on fears of supply disruption. Wall Street opened Monday with the Dow tumbling over 1,200 points. European indices sold off. Financial commentators across the world reached for their crisis playbooks.
And the Nigerian Stock Exchange went up.
On Monday March 2, 2026, as the US-Iran conflict triggered global supply shocks and pushed crude oil prices higher, the NGX All-Share Index rose modestly to close at 195,514 points — ending a multi-day pull back and standing out against the global selloff. Aradel Holdings and Oando both surged nearly 10%, leading a market that absorbed the global shock and turned it into a buying signal.
Let that land for a moment. As geopolitical tremors shook every major bourse on earth, Lagos shrugged, rotated into oil and gas stocks — entirely logical for Africa’s largest crude producer.
This followed a prior week in which the NGX All-Share Index surged 6.95%, with market capitalisation reaching ₦125.164 trillion and weekly turnover hitting ₦252.57 billion across 345,118 deals.
This is not luck. It is not noise. It is the result of a structural transformation in Nigerian capital markets that most of the world has entirely missed. And it is precisely why Harmattan exists.
The Story the World Is Not Telling Loudly Enough
Over the past twelve months, the NGX All-Share Index has advanced approximately 79% — one of the strongest performances of any major index globally during that period. Year-to-date in 2026 alone, the index is already up 25.30%, building on a foundation of sustained institutional buying across banking, oil and gas, industrial goods, and premium board stocks.
This is not a speculative bubble. It is a market pricing in a genuine and compounding reform story.
And yesterday — March 3, 2026, a day before Harmattan publishes its first words, that reform story deepened significantly. President Tinubu nominated Dr. Taiwo Oyedele as Minister of State for Finance. Oyedele is the economist, accountant, and public policy expert who chaired the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms. The man who personally designed and delivered the most sweeping overhaul of Nigeria’s tax architecture in decades.
Four landmark bills — the Nigeria Tax Act, the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, the Nigeria Revenue Service Establishment Act, and the Joint Revenue Board Act — were signed into law on June 26, 2025, taking effect January 1, 2026.
The reforms:
Exempted individuals earning ₦800,000 or less annually from income tax
Relieved small businesses with turnover below ₦100 million from company income tax
Replaced the old “pioneer status” with a new Economic Development Incentive, offering 5% annual tax credits for 5 years on qualifying capital expenditure.
Now the man who built the engine is being handed the wheel. This is not a routine cabinet reshuffle. It is a signal that Nigeria’s reform agenda is deepening, not retreating, and that the Tinubu administration intends to push these changes through with technical rigor rather than political convenience.
Three stories converging in a single week. One unmistakable direction.
Why I Built Harmattan — And Why It Took This Long
I grew up in Nigeria. I started my career as a banker — six years in the Nigerian financial system, eventually serving as Operations Manager of a bank’s branch. As a banker, I watched capital move. I watched where it accumulated, where it got stuck, and what happened to ordinary Nigerians when financial infrastructure worked and when it failed. That experience shaped everything that came after.
When I relocated to Canada for further studies, I carried that knowledge with me. I went on to work in banking, mortgage lending, and business analysis. I earned an MBA. I progressed through the CPA Canada professional qualification program. I built businesses. I kept investing back home — directly in companies, indirectly through networks I trusted.
And through all of it, across all those years on both sides of the Atlantic, I could never find the publication I actually needed. Something that covered Nigerian and African capital markets the way Bloomberg covers Wall Street. Rigorous. Independent. Built for the diaspora professional in Toronto or London or New York who wants to invest back home with real intelligence — and equally built for the fund manager in Lagos, the government official in Abuja, and the institutional allocator in New York who is just beginning to understand what Africa’s capital markets are becoming.
I looked for that publication for years. It did not exist. So, I built it.
Harmattan is named for the wind that crosses West Africa every dry season — stripping away haze, bringing visibility, clarifying the horizon. It is not always comfortable. But it brings clarity. That is the only promise this publication makes. Not hype. Not cheerleading. Not doom. Clarity about what is actually happening in African capital markets, what it means, and what it demands of serious investors who are paying attention.
What Harmattan Covers
Harmattan publishes independent research, analysis, and market intelligence across:
The Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) — equities, fixed income, ETFs, and market structure.
FMDQ Securities Exchange — Nigeria’s critical debt and foreign exchange market.
African private markets — venture capital, private equity, and the emerging listed private market infrastructure.
Macro forces — CBN monetary policy, inflation, FX, fiscal policy, and the economic environment shaping Nigerian and African investment.
New market infrastructure —the next generation of exchanges and capital market platforms being built across Sub-Saharan Africa that will reshape how the continent raises and deploys capital.
Every Wednesday, subscribers receive our Nigeria Market Weekly. Free subscribers receive sharp, accessible coverage of what moved, what matters, and what is coming. Paid subscribers receive everything in the free tier plus deep-dive sector and company analysis, private market intelligence, and dedicated coverage of structural developments reshaping African capital markets.
Who This Is For
Harmattan is written for everyone with a stake in Africa’s financial future. Diaspora Nigerians building wealth across borders. Global investors waking up to the continent’s capital markets. Institutions seeking independent intelligence they can trust. Governments and regulators watching market development. And Nigerians at home — in Lagos, Abuja, Aba, Port Harcourt, Kano, and Maiduguri — who deserve clear-eyed, honest analysis of the markets that shape their economy.
If Bloomberg had built something for African capital markets, it would look something like this. We are building it ourselves.
A Personal Ask — From Harmattan’s First 100 Readers
If you are reading this, you are among the very first people to encounter Harmattan. That matters to me personally.
I am not asking you simply to subscribe, though I hope you will. I am asking you to do something more valuable: reply to this post or send a message to hello@harmattanintel.com and introduce yourself. Tell me who you are, where you are, and what you are watching in African capital markets right now. Tell me what the publication you always wanted to read would cover that nobody is covering.
The first 100 readers of any publication shape everything that comes after. Your questions become the research agenda. Your gaps become the editorial calendar. Your networks become the community.
I read every message personally. I respond to every one.
Subscribe free below. Share this with one person in your network who should be watching Nigeria right now. And if you are ready for deeper access — sector analysis, company research, private market intelligence, and everything that goes beyond the weekly — paid subscriptions are open.
The wind is blowing. I am glad you are here for it.
— Bestman Founder, Harmattan harmattanintel@outlook.com | harmattanintel.com Canada
Nothing published in Harmattan constitutes financial advice. Always consult a qualified financial adviser before making investment decisions.