HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT, LOW TRUST: NIGERIA’S VICIOUS CYCLES

Joshua J. Omojuwa reckons that the business environment is, in many cases, unfriendly

I returned to the country after a short holiday in the UK and Canada. As usual, I tried to pretend I was coming into the country for the first time, just to imagine what a first-time visitor to Nigeria sees when they land at our airports. From experience, I know the best airport to land when coming to Nigeria is the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja, however, it felt like a great opportunity to experience arrival in Lagos again. This isn’t a piece about the failings of government, so I’d just say it wasn’t a pleasant sight to see 11 officials, nine men and two women, waiting for passengers who had just waited about an hour or more to collect their luggage.

Their collective appearance looked like, “who sent you here?” “what are you doing in this country?” “You are not welcome here!” Whilst that image would look normal to the average Nigerian, like hearing an immigration official telling an adult, “please call your parents” as part of the process of stamping their Nigerian passport, it just cannot be normal to anyone visiting Nigeria for the first time. That was a tragic sight, so unwholesome and unwelcoming.

We have many challenges as a country, sadly though, a lot of them have nothing to do with money, it has got everything to do with the fact that we have just gotten overly used to accepting anomalies as normal. We need not wait to discover how to ease arrival into our country, those in charge of these things travel around the world, so they clearly know exactly what to do. Sadly though, they aren’t patient enough to go through the process here themselves, so they are probably blind to the reality.

This piece, however, is not about government and its copiously documented failings since the advent of time. It is about the other fingers and their often-forgotten direction. When a Nigerian starts a business, you already know what you are going to get from government, what you may not know is what you are going to get from those hired to make the business thrive.

I was reading Olumide Soyombo’s book, Vantage, where he wrote extensively about his experience investing in tech startups and running Bluechip Technologies. Interestingly, his experience as a former co-owner of a nightclub, Club 57, caught my attention when it comes to running certain businesses in Nigeria. The author, Olumide Soyombo, called it a peculiar crime. He mentioned that a lot of barmen wouldn’t mind being hired for next to nothing. If as a business owner you see that as a convenient opportunity, you’d have reality staring at you soon. He went on to write that some of these folks were in the habit of bringing their own stock of drinks to the club to sell, passing same off as products of the club. In essence, they do not steal your stock or your money, they just sell their own products – smuggled in with the connivance of your security team. Whilst you are there appreciating that your clients are popping a lot of bottles, you’d soon be shocked to see that not only are you left with more stock than should be expected after such a great night, but your money also isn’t missing either — even though your business is getting killed. This is a classic theft in that business.

Alongside Olumide’s experience, I have read viral twitter posts on the experiences of other bar and restaurant owners on all they need to get up to, just to ensure that the staff they hired to create value and earn money do not consistently get away with acts that are deigned to kill the business. Staff directly stealing stock, others tampering with your CCTV to get away with some crime or the other.

This is not limited to nightlife businesses though.  Every other person knows someone who invested money in a vehicle or more, hired drivers and had agreements on the sharing formula and other issues surrounding the business. There are endless tales and tears of how those generally turn out. You are unlikely to notice any problem in the first few weeks or so — if you are lucky —, you are however guaranteed a constant tale of woes soon after. Pensions and savings have been buried on the altar of these businesses. Things going as planned is the exceptional case, because things will most likely take a terrible turn.

These tales cut across various businesses. In our country, you cannot set up a business and then just trust others to run it. It is not even something to be imagined, let alone try out. It also hardly matters if they are family members. That you are even available to manage the business does not mean everything that can go bad will not. It is you versus some staff members hellbent on getting more reward than the salary on offer.

Note that these aren’t normal. It should be okay for one to make some money, set up a business and just trust hired hands to keep the business running. Often, if you risk that in Nigeria, you’d run out of business. There would be more jobs if capital didn’t have to endure such low — almost zero — trust situations.

We are obsessed with taking advantage of one another. This is costing everyone. Someone, with say N50m savings, would rather look to buy a property or invest it in some financial instrument. That N50m would have done more for the economy if it were to be used to set up a business. It goes into rent, salaries and creating a cycle of value daily.

The absence of trust in our society is a price we pay every day. That cynicism is not unfounded. If you aren’t in denial, you’d see why every day. The menace of fake drugs and fake drinks is as much a failing of government as it is a representation of people’s wickedness. This is a cascade of vicious cycles. If we don’t start looking out for one-another, we will stay in these cycles for a while.

 Omojuwa is chief strategist, Alpha Reach/ author, Digital Wealth Book