Nigerian cities with greater potential than Japan
and Dubai exist, but have been quarantined and
bogged down in the orgy of lamentation. These
cities, such as Aba, Onitsha, Lagos and Kano,
need to be urgently negotiated, renegotiated and
revisited from their very foundations.
Aba, one of the ancient cities in Nigeria is
nicknamed “Japan of Africa”. In Aba, more than
50, 000 hand-made shoes are churned out daily.
In little corners of this ancient city, hardworking
men of giant minds are known to replicate the
kind of creative imagination for which the three
Japanese cities of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka are
known today. Most important are the ingenuity
and the industry of its people in handcrafts
including manufacturing, fashion and design,
steel works, fabrication etc. Virtually every street
in Aba has its own fair share of businesses.
However, the city is fast ebbing into oblivion,
with the sanity of inhabitants becoming severely
strained. Total government negligence and
blatant attitudinal degeneration of inhabitants
have transmogrified Aba into a slum, where
sewage flowed down the dirt filled streets with
putrid sewage from the garbage piles – turning
the roads into putrid smelling mud slides that
folks just walk through like it was nothing.
The original Japan is a country “in the moon”.
It’s presently the world’s third largest economy
by nominal GDP and the world’s fourth largest
economy by PPP. It’s the second largest
producer of automobiles in the world. It’s a
leading nation in scientific research and has
produced 16 Nobel Laureates in physics,
chemistry and medicine. It leads the world in
robotics production, possessing more than half
of the world’s industrial robots. It’s the third
largest free market economy in the world; and it
has the longest overall life expectancy at birth of
any country in the world. In Japan, persons born
between 2010 and 2015 are expected to live
above 83.5 years.
From the foregoing, do Aba, Onitsha, Kano and
Lagos cities of Nigeria in any way replicate the
Japanese cities of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka etc?
One of the colossal causes of the geometrical
retrogression of these Nigerian cities is
indiscipline. In his book, “The Trouble with
Nigeria”, late Achebe wrote that “Indiscipline
pervades our lives so completely that one may
be justified in calling it the condition par
excellence of contemporary Nigerian society”.
Why would Onitsha Main Market, Ariaria Market
Aba and Balogun Market Lagos brag about being
among the largest open air markets in West
Africa? Are they not aware that open air
marketing is a brainchild of indiscipline and not
abreast with the 21st century strategies of
efficient marketing?
In Onitsha and Aba for instance, there are no
marked distinctions between markets, industrial
layouts and residential areas. In these cities, you
can live anywhere, trade anywhere (even in the
middle of a highway) and build anything
anywhere – people even attach petrol stations to
residential houses and no one makes a noise.
Something must be done with the speed of light
to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat on
behalf of all notable Nigerian cities. Apart from
rebuilding the foundations of these cities and the
provision of basic amenities, something must be
done to encourage the patronization of ‘made in
Nigeria’ products by Nigerians.
In Aba for instance, clothings and wears better
than those from Europe and the UK are produced
daily but with ‘made in Italy’ and ‘made in
England’ tags. The reasons given by the
manufacturers were that if the products were to
come with ‘made in Aba’ labels, nobody will buy.
In most cases, to make these ‘fake’ products
more original, the producers are tempted to first
export them to nearby African countries were
most unsuspecting Nigerians will now go and
smuggle them into the country as foreign goods
and sell them as such.
The Japans and Dubais in Nigeria; Aba, Onitsha,
Kano and Lagos juggle trillions in gross domestic
output daily, and so has the potentials to
develop this country and make it prominent just
as Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka did to Japan, and
Dubai to the UAE, especially in this period that
the contribution of crude oil to the GDP is
expected to reduce. But first and foremost, a
determined government must brace up to
adequately invest and harness these potentials
just as Japan and UAE did.