What will 2019 be like?

So last year I did a tongue-in-cheek piece about what I thought 2018 would be like and to my surprise got a few things right. I think my performance was a little more than can be accounted for by chance. So I want to try again this year, with my tongue still firmly planted in cheek for the most parts.

World

The general consensus from people who seem to know what they are talking about is that the world’s economy is in trouble and that 2019 is going to be bad. All decent charts point to another 2008 or worse. I have seen people advise that the only way to avoid a bloodbath is to change everything you own into USD cash. Well, this is my prediction: 2019 is going to be a difficult year economically, but the world won’t experience a 2008-like recession/crash. One of the reasons for this is that when markets/systems prime themselves for large-scale events like this, they generally never happen, or at least the sting is taken out. I am hoping the people at ‘all the powerful tables’ (to quote Michelle Obama) are primed for 2019.

Oil prices will remain low for most of early 2019 but will recover in time for the end of the year, making a final, defiant rally. The kind of rally that will have anybody who knows anything about the future of energy shaking their heads.

The global trend towards isolation and nationalism will become stronger. In the same vein, the global trend against immigration will increase and with it racism and declarations of white (and other kinds of racial) supremacy and all the associated evil. The fight for this will begin to shift from fringe groups (like the so-called ‘far right’ groups) into more mainstream arenas like academia. Expect rehashed/tired debates on the meaning and concept of IQ as proxy debates on the inequality/superiority of races. To prime your senses for such debates check out the recent spat between Nassim Nicholas Taleb and a bunch of IQ apologists. Taleb’s bombast can distract (if not even detract) from his argument so maybe check out the Sam Harris/Ezra Klein debate earlier in 2018. Another thing you definitely should do to prime yourself for this (heinously insidious) debate is to read books. Check out the history of the use of the so-called ‘science of intelligence’ to perpetuate prejudice about race. A good place to start will be Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man.

China will continue to show itself more strategically astute than the US. Despite an economic slowdown, they will be largely fine. Although it is already clear that China has emerged as the ideological, military and economic counterbalance to the US, this year will throw these dynamics into sharper contrast. Trump’s men (Bolton and co.) will get desperate about countering the Chinese influence around the world (especially in Africa.).

If the world experiences a Public Health scare anywhere close to half of what happened in 2014, the panic will lead to significant disruption in trade and travel and heightened xenophobia and hateful rhetoric. The world will very likely experience such a scare.

Liverpool will win the EPL (despite Klopp and his unbelievably bad luck), Real Madrid the UCL (to people’s utter frustration, like, ‘is there even a God?’ level of frustration).

Nigeria

Nigeria will have a torrid year. Everyone seems to agree on this. The question is how bad is it going to get? My prediction: very, very bad. The only way to get a sense of how bad it will get is to remember that 2018 was quite terrible all-round, one of the worst, in recent decades. 2019 will be worse. The only way this is not going to happen is if any (preferably both) of the following things happen sometime before the end of February;

• Nigerians suffer an acute moral crisis of conscience. Or some epidemic of the sort. The post-Jonah Nineveh level of a crisis of conscience, the ‘national fast for three days and wear sack clothes’ level of moral soul-wrenching awareness. The kind of coordinated social event Christians refer to as ‘a great revival’, only in this case, on how to be decent human beings.
• Nigeria suffers an acute but short-lived restructuring event. Acute in the sense that we didn’t see it coming and it only lasts, say, three months. One sure (and honestly, most likely) way this could happen is if we get a visit from an intergalactic nation-fixing alien civilization, the way it happened in Arrival, but just for Nigeria.

The general elections will be a mess. It will barely hold. If it does;

• APC will sweep the Governorship seats and most of the National Assembly
• APC will win the Presidential election to a few people’s utter, utter shock. Then all will be well again. And so help us, God.

The economy is going to continue in the direction it has been heading for a while. States will continue to find it hard to pay salaries, for instance. Harder than they found it in 2016/2017.

Boko Haram, Bandits (according to the Nigerian Security agencies) and killer herdmen will continue to be a problem. For the sake of Nigerians, I hope not on the scale of 2018.

Nigeria will get to the final of the Nations Cup but fail to win it, with Odion Ighalo missing several sitters.

The traffic situation in Lagos will get worse with new ‘4:00 AM, Eko Bridge Traffic’-style records being posted monthly. And Lagosians will be utterly unprepared for it, to judge by their social media posts.