In 2003, Dangote set out to build his first cement plant with a budget of about $480 million. On completion of the project in 2007, he had borrowed an extra $175 million, built a dam, a gas pipeline (92km long) and more than 400 new houses. But guess what? No Nigerian bank was big enough to fund this project. In fact, the capital in more than 90% of the banks in Nigeria that year was just a little over $20 million. He had to look elsewhere.

Simple economic terms
GDP — in straightforward terms, the GDP or Gross Domestic Product is the monetary value of all finished goods and services in a country within a specific period. It is used to estimate the size of an economy and growth rate.
GDP per capita — If all the money Nigeria made in a year was split evenly amongst every single Nigerian, what each person gets is called the GDP per capita.
National Budget — The government gets money from taxes and fees and spends it on things like healthcare, infrastructure, education and general expenditures.


Nigeria’s economy

Poverty level by State in Nigeria (image 1)
Nigeria has the largest economy in Africa with a GDP of $398 billion compared to its closest competitor; South Africa, which has a GDP of $368 billion. However, the real wealth of a nation is calculated by its GDP per capita, and Nigeria ranked 140 out of 186 in GDP per capita global ranking.
Nigeria’s GDP per capita stands at $1,963 compared to South Africa’s $6,100 and Egypt’s $12,000. (Luxembourg ranks the highest in the world with GDP per capita of $144,000).
Nigeria is one of only 8 ‘World Bank red zones’. These are the only countries on the planet where GDP per capita (an indicator of individual share of wealth) has fallen steadily over the past 20 years.
Nigeria’s budget for the health sector in 2018 was $938 million for a population of over 190 million people compared to South Africa’s $17.6 billion for a population of just 56 million people. This means that as an average Nigerian, the government’s health budget for you for a whole year was just $4.5. Don’t forget the UK which set aside over $250 billion for the healthcare of its citizens in the same year (more than 10x Nigeria’s entire 2018 budget). That means each citizen was entitled to health funds of $4,000.


How did others do it?
You see, money is a coward; when money goes somewhere, and there’s trouble, money runs away. But when it goes to a place, and there is peace, it stays there. You don’t see money go to Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan, but you see it go to the UK, Singapore, London, China, etc. If you scare money, it runs away.

China Poverty Decline from 1981–2005 (image 2)
In a single generation, China has had over 600 million people move out of poverty. Three hundred million people (about the population of the US) move from rural to urban areas every ten years. This is because China is still experiencing its economic take-off phase; this describes a situation where the majority of the working population move from agricultural jobs to tech and industry and move from the country-side to cities.
The level of urbanisation that took place in China in 22 years is equivalent to the UK’s level that took 120 years and USA that took 80 years. So maybe there is hope for Nigeria.

Other Indicators

Number of Billionaires in China — 2015 (image 3)
According to BBC, China produces two (2) new billionaires every week and one million (1,000,000) millionaires every year.
I wanna be a billionaire, billionaire yeah yeah, I wanna be a billionaire, billionaire yeah yeah
(Verse 2)
I wanna wake up in a Lamborghini, I wan chop life on Santorini, oh yeah.
-Teni the entertainer, Billionaire

Meanwhile, according to the NDIC, 98% of Nigerians don’t have up to N500,000 ($1,250) in their accounts. According to Mckinsey & Co, only 2m people in Nigeria have purchasing power and annual incomes over $10,000.

2. In India, the city of Mumbai alone has almost 60,000 millionaires; meanwhile, in Nigeria, there are just 12,300 millionaires in the entire country.

3. One of the measures for the economy and middle class of a society is the records of airport passengers compared to its population. In one year, Nigeria had 15.2 million airport passengers compared to Singapore Changi Airport, which served over 65 million passengers. (Singapore population — 5.6 million). The metropolis of Shenzen alone in China had over 400 million airport passengers in a single year. (Shenzen population — 12.5 million)

4. South Africa’s fourth-largest bank — Nedbank has a market cap of $72 billion. This is bigger than the market cap of all the banks in Nigeria put together, including GTB, Zenith, FirstBank and Ecobank.


So what do we do?
The real wealth of a nation is in its people and like Dangote would say, “Nobody will fix Nigeria for us until we take the lead”. One of the greatest assets that have helped China and India grow is its population.
So is Nigeria a truly wealthy nation? The answer is No. However, it can be so. If an average Nigerian produces half the GDP per capita of the average UK citizen, our GDP will not be $398 billion but $3.9 trillion.

The growth of businesses drives the economy, and therefore, the government must put in place suitable policies to promote business growth. We must increase our productivity as a nation. And it begins with you. Do better, work smarter and grow bigger.
Please comment and share if you find this useful. I am Klein Udumaga.

This article was originally posted on my medium page. Please follow as I shed more light on the Nigerian economy and how to sell to Nigerians.
https://medium.com/@kleinuduh/is-nigeria-a-truly-wealthy-nation-7f839d838a6c

Word for thought...

Really insightful... This is what I have been telling Pple 4 years

This is very informative. I wish people could see these facts.

We dont care about this gdp per capital or whatever all we want is equal public holidays with christians and shariah constitution with more kids who only know to recite koran all their life. Sai barbar...










Seriously though we are just a time bomb cos nothing would change soon because all we do is religion and ethnicity no one wants to face reality.

Imagine zamfara state with an annual igr of #7B wants to construct a new govt house with #7B, i.e besides the 300 new mosques and sponsoring more pilgrims to mecca this year. If the state was run exclusively from its igr would the governor dare waste its resources as such?

Until we get it right from the closest seat of power which is the local govt have we would continue wasting our resources.

Well, there’s obviously the problem of wastage and misunderstanding economics. This should not be allowed.

Nigeria also has the problem of restricting a free market. When you control things thy are used for production you hurt the economy. There should be no stipulated by the government tariff for Discos. There should be no basic pump price. Those things should be determined by the market (demand and supply).

It stabilizes the economy in the long run. I’ll share about this soon.

veeshock:
We dont care about this gdp per capital or whatever all we want is equal public holidays with christians and shariah constitution with more kids who only know to recite koran all their life. Sai barbar...










Seriously though we are just a time bomb cos nothing would change soon because all we do is religion and ethnicity no one wants to face reality.

Imagine zamfara state with an annual igr of #7B wants to construct a new govt house with #7B, i.e besides the 300 new mosques and sponsoring more pilgrims to mecca this year. If the state was run exclusively from its igr would the governor dare waste its resources as such?

Until we get it right from the closest seat of power which is the local govt have we would continue wasting our resources.

Speak2klein:
Well, there’s obviously the problem of wastage and misunderstanding economics. This should not be allowed.

Nigeria also has the problem of restricting a free market. When you control things thy are used for production you hurt the economy. There should be no stipulated by the government tariff for Discos. There should be no basic pump price. Those things should be determined by the market (demand and supply).

It stabilizes the economy in the long run. I’ll share about this soon.

I dont think it would be feasible for discos to operate a free market per se, you are forgetting the fact discos only distribute what they are supplied, besides discos have monopoly in their areas of operation so there is no competition which should normally improve service. As for pump price again I dont think fixing the retail price is whats killing our refining capacity but rather persistent reluctance of the govt to make things given the fact the major importers and distributors benefitting from the entire process are close to power, so the fraud is continually perpetuated with fake bills on landen as they say.

Naaaaa, we are not wealthy neither are we rich. We are just blessed and that blessing is our Curse



Call for our 250,000mAH lithium-ion solar powerbank that could power your TV, laptop, and up to 4 lighting points for up to 10 hours daily

Not When General Buhari is leading let's think of the way forward after 2023 , that's if another terrorist isn't taking over .

NA Next LEVEL WE DEY , ALL OF US GO CRY PAY THAT DEPT..NO BODY WILL DIE !

Hmmm I'm in awe. Don't know where to start everything about Nigeria currently is just bad.


I can only suggest one word for this mess

RESTRUCTURE

Ok

The most important thing to do before we can move forward as a nation is to solve ELECTRICITY problem

We should demand 24 hour electricity from this people, I don't know how but we gotta do something or na like dis e go dey dey...

We need light men...

I'm a young entrepreneur and I make money daily from my business, but I spend 80% of the money on fuel every day and generator maintenance...

Fix electricity and watch our naija "gbera"

what to do is restructuring or division along ethnic lines. let everyone go and manage their lives.

but the last option is the best, which is to sell the country to highest bidder and give all of us our share let's know what to do next

Money dey Nigeria.. I keep shouting it. Some say I am mad. Money is in Nigeria. People travel to struggle abroad only cos of the exchange rate oh. 1naira to 1$ you willl see people coming back to nigeria . I will make it in Nigeria though I travel oh..this year na to re visit uae for more business research.

We just need a complete change of mindset. If we invest in agriculture sincerely it would build our gross domestic product in measures that we can't imagine. But if we choose to continue with oil, we would be on this free fall course forever. A crude oil based economy is not sustainable

Ask the Chinese....

G

No we are not, its time to stop being decieved and face fact


we either borrow to fix our infrastructural deficit ($200 billion)and become a producing economy, or remain 200 million peasant farmers that relly on mere 2.5mbpd crude when Saudi has 11mbpd for 40 million rich arab and US has 14 for 300 million rich americans

US borrowed to fix critical infrastructure and investors and inventors started rushing in, Dubai and UAE borrowed to fix their desert shithole and now its Middle Eastern Economic hub

While developers make noise online, for this quater they couldnt get one kobo as FDI, while SouthWest got $5.6billion in 2 months, even Makinde pulled in millions of Dollars

the pathetic leeches and the chest beaters all have states battling with intense poverty, yet they focus on SouthWest without significant poverty

.

Nigeria is stinkingly rich.. but bad leaders has made us extremely poor

Yoruba and their shit hole statistics

You are wrong brother. Nigeria has potentials. But it is unfortunate we have not been able to realise and harness those potentials. To a greater extent, we are better endowed than China, or Saudi Arabia and some other emerging economies. Ask me what is wrong, why are we not at least at par with these advanced countries. Simple. Leadership!. Leadership has let everyone of us down. What has government done about millions and billions of dollars siphoned out of the country, what has government done to improve human capital, in fact we are trying in our educational sector with the little we have had, what has government done to generate revenue from other sources other than oil. When you ask these questions, you begin to get answers. Let's take count of the amount of natural resources Nigeria is endowed with. Logically, we should be better than Saudi, UAE, and competing with the likes of US, Canada and so on. We should be "giant of africa" in the real sense of it. We have resources. A lot of it. We have got the fighting spirit but corruption, and nepotism has brought us on our knees.

Realistic. Bare truth.

Nigeria is a very wealthy nation but few people among us are the ones enjoying the wealth, do u think dubai is richer? They started building their country in the eighties and they only have oil o, look at them today, now compare them to Nigeria, we don't just have oil, we have gold, uranium, so many solid minerals but....
Yea our leaders

..

Yes, if one single person can have 2 bullion van

Nigeria’s GDP is 1.2 trillion dollars. Where did you get the figures you are quoting? I know our per capital income is above 2k usd. It’s too small but nigeria is not a poor country. We simply have a population problem.

stigmond:
Word for thought...

See correct post. Make i archive this one sharp sharp

My greatest regrets in life is being a Nigerian

Nigeria is rich but hungry due to mismanagement of few