Your quick, casual, and sharp rundown of what’s shaping Nigeria and the world — made for the scroll generation.

Issue: Monday, February 2, 2026
Theme: New Rules, Old Risks

Hey there,

I’m sure you are tired of hearing this but Happy New Year - welcome to 2026 and to our first ATH edition of the year.

January came in hot. Economists tried to convince us the world economy is “fine,” even as currencies wobble and markets obsess over the next Fed move. In Nigeria, government and analysts are arguing over a 2026 tax law and whether growth forecasts will ever translate into cheaper food. In Gaza, Washington is pushing phase two of its peace plan while bombs still fall. In Benin, voters went to the polls and somehow produced a parliament with zero opposition seats. And in the background, regulators across Europe and the U.S. finally started treating AI and Big Tech like actual power centers, not shiny gadgets.

If you were busy just trying to survive January, this is your catch-up: five big stories, full context, and a clean Nigerian lens.

January ended with a weird contradiction. On one side, global stocks kept brushing record highs as investors bet that 2026 will be another “good enough” year for growth. A Reuters poll of economists still pegs world output at around 3%, almost exactly what they predicted a year ago. Another Reuters markets outlook flagged three big drivers for 2026: geopolitics, U.S. midterm elections and diverging central-bank policies, with a possible AI-driven tech bubble sitting in the background.

On the other side, the U.S. Federal Reserve and European Central Bank both held rates steady and gave almost no hints about when they might cut again, warning that inflation is still too sticky. Meanwhile, the dollar has started to slide as markets assume that when cuts come, they’ll hit the U.S. first, a shift Reuters summed up with the line: “It’s the U.S.’s currency, but it’s everyone else’s problem,” as emerging-market FX reacts to each move.

Context: 2025 was about crushing inflation; 2026 is about managing the hangover. Debt is high, growth is middling, and every central bank is terrified of cutting too fast and being blamed for a second inflation spike.

👉 Why it matters to you: For Nigeria, these “macro vibes” are not abstract. A softer dollar and steady global growth can boost oil revenues, attract portfolio flows to the NGX and give Abuja more room to borrow, but they also expose how fragile our own fundamentals are. If you’re hustling for a remote dollar job, saving to japa, or raising a seed round, 2026 will reward people who actually understand interest rates, FX and risk, not just people who quote them on X.

Sources: Reuters | Reuters

At home, January opened with a fight over one big question: can Nigeria tax its way out of a cost-of-living crisis?

On the optimistic side, a report by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) projected that GDP growth could hit 5.5% in 2026 if government fully follows through on policy reforms, with inflation potentially easing to 16% from an estimated 21% in 2025. A BusinessDay summary of CBN’s Business Expectation Survey added that many firms plan to hire more in 2026, banking on a somewhat more stable macro environment.

But the new 2026 tax law landed badly with a lot of people. A widely shared BusinessDay column called it “legislative treason against a starving population,” arguing that the combination of new levies and compliance demands will squeeze already struggling households and SMEs. Premium Times and other outlets have also highlighted confusion over things like the rumoured 5% fuel surcharge and new rules for digital and virtual-currency income.

Context: Nigeria is stuck between revenue reality and political pain. We need more tax to fund infrastructure and social spending, but we’re trying to collect it in an economy where food, rent and transport already feel unbearable for a large share of the population.

👉 Why it matters to you: If you’re a young professional, freelancer or founder, 2026 is the year to actually understand your tax profile and not just complain about it. The same reforms that could stabilise the macro picture and strengthen the naira can also show up as higher PAYE deductions, stricter enforcement for business owners and new obligations if you earn in dollars or crypto. The question is whether Abuja can convert extra revenue into visible improvements fast enough that people feel the trade-off was worth it. Until then, the smartest move is to build financial buffers and treat tax literacy as part of your career toolkit.

Sources: BusinessDay | Premium Times

If you only half-follow Gaza news, January might have sounded hopeful: the U.S. announced it was launching phase two of its 20-point plan to end the war, centred on demilitarisation and new governance structures for the strip. At the Davos meetings, U.S. envoy Jared Kushner pitched a “New Gaza” reconstruction and investment plan, while Palestinian technocrat Ali Shaath briefed participants on a proposed National Committee to administer the territory.

But on the ground, the reality is brutal. Israeli strikes in late January killed more than 30 Palestinians in a single day after both sides accused each other of truce violations. A Reuters investigation showed how Israel has quietly shifted its internal “yellow line” deeper into shattered Gaza neighbourhoods, entrenching military positions despite ceasefire language about withdrawals. Another Reuters exclusive reported that Hamas is pushing for its police to retain a role in Gaza’s internal security, resisting plans to fully sideline it from the future order.

Context: Phase two of the plan imagines a technocratic Palestinian authority, international peacekeepers, weapon buyback schemes and staged Israeli pullbacks. Phase one was a full ceasefire and the reopening of Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt is still incomplete. The diplomatic script is ahead of the military reality.

👉 Why it matters to you: Gaza may feel far away, but it shapes everything from oil prices to how global institutions talk about international law, human rights and double standards. For Nigeria, which depends on Middle-East-linked energy markets and wants a bigger role in UN peace missions, the Gaza file is a test of how non-Western states navigate a world where Western powers are both referee and player. For young Nigerians, it’s also a live lesson in how “peace plans” can be more about managing optics than ending suffering and why reading beyond headlines is a survival skill.

Sources: Reuters | And More Reuters

Just over a month after a failed coup attempt shook Benin, voters went to the polls on 11 January for new parliamentary elections. The result: both ruling parties aligned with President Patrice Talon won all 109 seats in the National Assembly. The main opposition party, the Democrats, captured just over 16% of the vote, below a new 20% threshold introduced in 2024 that effectively bars them from representation.

Turnout was low at around 37%, and opposition figures complained about polling delays and being excluded from parts of the count. The electoral commission insists the vote was largely smooth, but analysts interviewed by Reuters warn that the outcome deepens political exclusion and erodes already-fragile checks on presidential power.

Context: Benin used to be cited as one of West Africa’s more stable democracies. Between tightened electoral rules, the December coup attempt and this new one-party parliament, it’s starting to look more like other states where democratic institutions exist on paper but not in practice.

👉 Why it matters to you: Nigeria cannot afford a ring of fragile states on its borders. Trade routes, migration flows and security threats don’t care about ECOWAS lines on a map. A more authoritarian Benin could mean rougher politics around the Seme border, less accountability for cross-border smuggling, and more strain on regional diplomacy at a time when ECOWAS is already struggling to respond to coups in the Sahel. For young Nigerians who dream of a borderless, opportunity-rich West Africa, January was a reminder that regional integration can go backward fast.

Sources: Reuters

If 2023–25 was the wild-west phase of AI, January 2026 felt like the beginning of the regulatory era.

In Europe, the European Commission opened formal proceedings under the Digital Markets Act, pushing Google to give rival AI firms and search engines fair access to its Gemini AI services and search data. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority proposed rules that would let publishers opt out of having their content summarised in Google’s AI Overviews, while demanding more transparency around search rankings and AI-generated results. The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority separately launched a review into how advanced AI will reshape retail finance, promising guidance on consumer protection later this year.

Across the Atlantic, regulators and courts also moved. The California Senate passed a bill to regulate lawyers’ use of AI tools. U.S. judges formed a working group to tackle how courts should use and limit AI in legal processes. Reuters reported a clash between the Pentagon and AI startup Anthropic over military use of its models, highlighting the gap between “ethical AI” branding and defence-sector demand. Meanwhile, CES 2026 in Las Vegas was wall-to-wall AI, as entertainment and creator-economy leaders debated how tools will reshape jobs and IP.

Context: Governments are scrambling to impose guardrails without killing innovation; companies are lobbying to keep rules vague; creatives and users are trying to protect their work and data. Nobody has a perfect model yet, but the era of “move fast and break things” is clearly over.

👉 Why it matters to you: For Nigerian creators, lawyers, founders and devs, these rules will shape the platforms, income streams and tools you rely on, even if they’re written in Brussels or Sacramento. If AI systems must respect opt-outs and pay for training data, media and creative industries in Nigeria could eventually negotiate better deals. If courts and regulators treat AI output with suspicion, legal and compliance work around AI will become its own career track. The key is to stop seeing AI as just “cool tools” and start treating it as infrastructure that will be regulated like banks and telecoms.

Sources: AP News | Financial Times | PBS News | Reuters

Three breakthroughs from January that quietly rewired the future.

1. A Galaxy Cluster Too Early for the Textbooks

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory observed a galaxy cluster forming barely a billion years after the Big Bang, much earlier than models predicted. The finding suggests the universe built large-scale structure faster than we thought. - Reuters

Why it matters: JWST-era data science is exploding. The same skills used for analysing these cosmic images, high-dimensional data, simulation, machine learning are the skills African researchers and startups can deploy in climate models, logistics and finance.

2. Genes May Matter More for Lifespan Than We Thought

A new study, based on large twin datasets, estimates that genetics may account for about 50% of human lifespan differences, roughly double prior estimates. Lifestyle still matters hugely, but your DNA appears to play a bigger role than many public-health models assumed. - Science.org

Why it matters: Expect more interest and ethical questions around genetic testing, personalised medicine and insurance pricing. For countries like Nigeria, this is a nudge to invest in local genomics research so we’re not relying on data from other populations to make health decisions.

3. SpaceX Wants Solar-Powered Space Data Centers for AI

SpaceX quietly filed a request with U.S. regulators for permission to build solar-powered data centres on satellites, designed to run AI workloads in orbit using its Starlink network. Think of it as cloud computing that literally sits above the clouds. - TechCrunch

Why it matters: If data processing moves into space, countries that currently lack huge terrestrial data-centre capacity could, in theory, rent compute from orbit. That’s both a risk (dependency) and an opportunity: it could let Nigerian startups tap cutting-edge AI infrastructure without waiting for multi-billion-naira server farms at home.

January 2026 felt less like a fresh start and more like the second season of a show we’re already deep into: same characters, higher stakes. The global economy is not collapsing, but nobody is fully relaxed. Peace plans are being drafted while bombs still fall. Elections happen, but sometimes the scoreboard is designed so only one team can ever win. And the technologies that will shape your job and identity AI, data centres, quantum-ish everything, are finally being treated as political objects, not just gadgets.

For young Nigerians, the lesson is simple: you can’t afford to be “apolitical” about systems that decide your tax bill, FX rate, migration options or algorithmic reach. The goal isn’t to obsess over every headline; it’s to understand the structure underneath, who sets the rules, who can change them, and where you can plug in.

If you’ve made it through this first 2026 edition, you’re already doing more than most of your timeline to read the world with intention.

Share this with one person who keeps saying, “Abeg, I no dey follow news like that” and tell them 2026 is not the year to fly blind.

See you in the next issue.
— Mr. Mo, Editor, All That Happens News