Godogwu: @deenee, Thanks for your very excellent view on this topic.

The Funny but yet annoying fact is that, Most people on this forum don't believe anything good can ever come out of Nigeria. They expect Nigeria to be as beautiful as Dubai or as rich as the US, they believe that no person should be poor and they simply don't want to come to terms with the fact that there must be a hierarchy in the society for social balance. I believe some people on here would keep on blabbing if Nigeria is declared a first world country tomorrow.

@olodostein, I can in some way understand parts of your argument, but i would say it is mostly nonsense. You were talking about the kind of people that go to these malls, saying they drove SUVs and all that. First of all have you been to malls abroad? (Emirates, Edmonton?) do you see the kind of cars parked at the car lots?, ranging from SUVs to super fast cars? and just to inform you, there are hybrid SUVs now in the market and who are you to dictate the kind of cars people use, it is strictly their business whether or not they are gas gauslers . About the Class issue with these malls , most people enter malls typically for window shopping or just to select an item or two. It happens everywhere in the world!, not everyone that enters a mall has the ability to just put things in the cart without looking at the prices and I'm sure you also do not have that ability. And when exactly do you feel these malls should be put in place?, when Nigeria looks exactly like Dubai right?, then we can start having malls? are you okay?.....We are not jumping from stone age to the 21st century, just because there are malls being built, I'm sure you know some places in the US or Uk have little or nothing to do with electricity and people still live and survive!.

As for some that were blabbing that 90% of people in Nigeria live on less than $2.00 a day, please I would like to know where you got that fact from. because if that is true then where is the middle, the upper and the elite class?, if you think of it...it doesn't make sense! That info basically means 9 out of 10 Nigerians are poor, which is a very HUGE LIE!!, and for the others involving the government, please stop blaming the government for you self inflicted wounds, the fact that your poor or lacking doesn't mean the government kept you that way, or do you expect the FG to give you N10m??, where exactly were you when others went to school, got degrees and started making money?...... Some Nigerians should learn not to compare and condemn the country based on some first world journalist's facts but help build the country. like someone on here said, some of you work at Walmart, McDonald, TESCO etc and are here blabbing about Nigeria as a failed country, meaning you would rather work where your accommodated than where you are celebrated

manny4life:


Small businesses are part of the economy just like you and I who work or transact business or go to school or whatever part of the economy. In addition to that, while small business, represent about 85% of the economy, they contribute about 10% to the economy which is less significant to larger companies/corporations.

Walmart, IMO hasn't monopolized the economy, I think you use the term "monopoly" loosely. If they monopolize the retail market, how come you have other giants like Target, and the rest of other market. The ONLY difference between Walmart and sears is, while both are big box retailers, one sources majority of it's products oversees while the other sources majorly from local vendors. While Walmart is a "general" retail class, the other focuses on the "home improvement" niche market. Should we now assume that sears, home depot, lowes et al monopolized the market?

The mind of the average American has been made up, but mere looking inward will tell you more. I think what concerned American think about Walmart is how they source their products and their "SIZES" thus making them and "everything" store.

How do you mean the way Walmart and other big business are doing business affect the average American?

In my own view, thanks to a capitalist America, EVERYONE wants gains and profit. The ability to produce cheaper and sell expensive is the model big businesses uses, unfortunately, Walmart does opposite by selling cheaper.

YES, this does affect the average worker, BUT you have to look at other "inward policies" from immigration to Labor Laws, Taxes, and the list continues. As you can see, America is not friendly in term of manufacturing thus affecting the average worker. When you have tough labor laws (unions), high taxes (America is set to raise Corps tax rate to about 40%, do the math), states like AZ are tough on immigration.

The Supreme court heard Arguments last Wednesday and likely to support AZ on it's tough sanction laws, and the list is endless, later people want to blame Apple for assembling phones in Korea or China or blame Walmart for importing from China. Like I said, don't blame Walmart, policies put them in that position.

Therefore, what's limiting U.S. growth is a list of several factors including DEBT; this is NOT the ability of people to "SPEND" but "EARN". U.S. has been spending a whole lot than they earn, so now harsher measures are in place which is stifling the economy.

Obviously we have to empower the "proletariat", however, such empowerment only comes if the fiscal policies are in place to encourage them. You cannot empower a low wage earner, YET, he has no access to financial, human, capital et al.

How can you encourage low income earners to earn more when your govt is hostile to the business that employ them? Me personally, I look at malls as "glorified marketplaces", they are no different from the open stalls and markets, they utilize same concept ONLY difference is one pays so much money than the other.

Like I said, this glorified marketplaces causes stiff competition, it's no one's fault if they can't compete, what they need do is change their business model and adapt. The ONLY way to protect Nigerian business is have strong IMPORT policies, and encourage domestic production, it doesn't matter where they sell it (mall or open stores)and how they sell it (in cash/kind, or online or whatever).


One thing you fail to understand is that in as log as the purchasing power of the average Nigerian is "LOW", market forces will react. Mall or no mall, they are less likely to purchase goods that are expensive from the mall. As for the politicians building malls other than purpose of profits, whether you bring in ship load of rice for instance, at the end of the day, the market will decide.

You can ONLY compete with something that you know of. If foreign goods are sold for N3,000 more than you sell, the average low wage earner is the one whom you're competing for his business, the importer of ship load is less likely to sell at your price... Market demand and supply.

Look, struggling traders or not, Nigeria has an aggressive competitive market where people negotiate. This is the reason why I once said WALMART WILL NOT survive in Nigeria because Walmart will jump through hoops and loops to bring in ship load, bribe their way out, pay wages, depreciate building, buy gas, do all of these and sell high to make profit or sell low like average Joe and make loss. It only kills small businesses when there isn't any bargaining power, but in as long as Nigerian business is built on negotiation, it won't affect them.

On the final note, to summarize my long epistle, malls ARE NOT the issue here. Malls are nothing but an outlet where people buy and sell just like your open stalls. What should be of concern is how to encourage local manufacturers of goods and services sold in stores. Fixing of fiscal policies STILL REMAINS the responsibility of the FG and not the average Joe who travels abroad and buy his products.

Olodostein:

I try. It is our duty to effects change. Although the white man is no longer at the helm of affairs in African countries, he is still playing the devil's advocate.

Our economies are held at ransom by them. But the black man is his own ultimate enemy. The black man is still suffering from a mental disease that needs to be cured before we can move forward.

Your friends reaction to that reminds me of my brief stay in Egypt. But in a positive way.

While I was there, whenever I go to a shop to buy water, I am presented with three different types: Aquafina, Nestle(both foreign companies) and Baraka(Egyptian made; although it has a taste to it and others taste better). Nevertheless, I observed that each time, the Egyptians would say that theirs is the best and that I should choose it over the others. It happened at different shops and before we knew it, we began patronizing their products.

They manufacture a lot of things and they will always say theirs is the best.

Your blog has a great concept. Keep it up. I will be checking it out from time to time and also feed you back on what is happening on the ground economically for you to analyze more on it.

The confessions of the economic hitman you recommended is a good read. Goes to show the length these "firms" can go to exploit developing countries.

manny4life:

I could begin to give you detail by detail for the reasons of your concerns, but then I will derail the thread...

Btw, who told you that shrink occurs at the store level? LOL... No matter how much you tag, or laser tag or whatever, shrink will ALWAYS occur

In the budgeting and financial aspect, its coded as "shrink reserve", because it's bound to ALWAYS occur,

besides, EAS tagging is very expensive that is why Walmart is using a new technology - RFID initiative.

ZUBY77: Shoprite, game and Roban in Enugu are way better than 90% of what you see in Europe. The prices are also cheaper than what you get in the street.

Olodostein:

Well noted. You make some valid points.

Meanwhile, Nigeria is Nigeria. America is America. We have to solve things our own way.

manny4life: Some comments on here make me question how people think... Seriously, mall or no mall, won't people still import product? For crying out loud, a mall is a glorified "Marketplace", period. Without these malls, people will still import junk from China, people will still import whether raw materials or finished goods, it will not stop them, what we have just created is an avenue to expand competition.

Godogwu:

Utter Rubbish!, I can afford to shop there any day and I am a student furthermore nobody I know lives on $2.00 and I know a lot of people so it most definitely not 90%

Rossikk: A booming economy and middle class expansion leads to an explosion of modern retail outlets across Nigeria.


Mall Revolution Sweeps Nigeria (Pics)



Enugu (Polo Park Mall)





LAGOS

Rossikk: A booming economy and middle class expansion leads to an explosion of modern retail outlets across Nigeria.


Mall Revolution Sweeps Nigeria (Pics)

deols: were they on sales the day you took this picture??



When is one going to open inIbadan

Olodostein:

High-man, you are going off point. I am talking about making the fundamentals of the economy strong.

How would you feel after living abroad for so many years with good infrastructures, you come back to your fatherland to rely on generators and what not?

It is dumb to compare those countries you mentioned with Nigeria. What is their per capital income to ours? What is the cost of doing business there? Did they build malls everywhere before stabilizing electricity and water supply? Cmon bro, get real.

I don't have problems with cars people drive. It just happen that eating public funds and driving big cars in a condescending manner has become the norm in Nigeria.

If some technology were to drastically reduce the price of oil to $5 per barrel, then will you accept the stark reality that Somalia is viable than your baseless economy and your pride shattered. The internet did it to post office and computers are still doing it to a lot of jobs out there.

Don't think you can decipher people's status on here, after all, this is just a forum.

manny4life:

Nigeria WILL ALWAYS be Nigeria, and nothing will change that

Yes, I do understand that we have to solve things our own way. I'll be lying if I said I did not understand your views, however, I'm a STRONG proponent for free market policies, however, I do believe in fairness. I believe that our govt has to do the right things to encourage domestic production (Important KEY factor) for sustainability.

I've always stated this, rather than treating the symptoms to a sickness, attack the sickness itself. Once the sickness is attacked, the symptoms will gradually fade away, but doing it the other way around, in as long as the sickness is there, and symptoms gone, it's only a matter of time before the symptoms come back again, and when then come back, they come back two times stronger and resistant. SLS devalued the currency, tried harder to limit demand in FOREX, obviously so people will not import anymore and the shocker came back on him. The demand for FOREX became higher than he imagined.

Like I've stated, Nigerians has to solve it's problem by itself without any rule book from IMF or World Bank or U.S. as a model, however, we can always look at their policies as an example and know where they were successful and failed, and make our policies different from theirs.

We talk about China a whole lot, but China is more friendly in terms of manufacturing, anybody and everybody can manufacture because there's less resisting forces AND monopoly in the market. What kills us in Nigeria is not one single thing, but for Nigeria to encourage domestic production, we need to look at

1. Resource availability - this includes availability of Land, Minerals and Resources, Human Capital (we think we don, but we don't have the know-how), Technology etc. This is to encourage boosting of manufacturing. In addition to that, we need INFRASTRUCTURES. Without electricity, transport network, export facilities and networks, etc Nigeria cannot manufacture on a LARGE locally consumption scale to meet demand, talk less of exporting hence making importation an option.

2. Capital - Without CAPITAL, everything is useless... This is where SLS is needed but unfortunately, he's busy sponsoring irrelevant cashless economy where the platform isn't ready.

3. Restructuring of the entire system (fiscal polices)- Nigeria needs to check on monopoly, there are businesses who monopolize the market because they have favors from the govt. There has to be less barriers to entry to encourage anyone and everyone to produce anything and everything. Obviously, you can't do no 3 with out no 1 and 2. Our tax codes and system needs to be revamped, we need tougher sanctions on import policies, but not without encouraging local production like giving out subsidies say in Agriculture.

I can continue but I'll stop, but you get the idea. My point is that I want local/domestic production INCREASED, so that regardless of where we sell them, there's competition and less import which will be great to our economy.

You're a well-learned Economist. I see your point of view. Maybe I could elaborate on that even further.


1. These malls may seem very appealing to the eyes. After all, the "economic benefits" of these malls are rather non-beneficial to the average Nigerian. I see that most of the stores are owned by foreigners. That's just a long story in its own rights. Basically, for a country with 150 million citizens, I am very sure we have abundant resources (capital, human, land) to kick-start the manufacturing industry. The government has continued to underestimate the advantages of manufacturing to the economy. Britain, in the 18th century, revolutionalized manufacturing (The Industrial Revolution).
Unfortunately, they lost sight of the manufacturing industry, mainly due to the rather silly land laws, social inequalities, labour issues and the lack of a managerial enterprise (most companies were owned and run by families with no regards for managers and their expertise). As a result, the manufacturing industry came to a halt. Obviously, under-performing companies were either sold for cheap or taken over. Shareholders began demanding quick returns on their investments, leading to short-termism by the organisations. The influx of shareholder pressure and rapid takeovers led to a massive financial engineering both by several organisations and industries - banking societies, investment banks, companies and the rest of it.

Certainly, these activities led to restructuring and when restructuring occurs, jobs are lost. Human capital is affected. Companies shed jobs leading to more unemployment rates. Senior management continued to enjoy ridiculous pay packages and the pressure to return shareholders' investments led to the mismanagement of the companies. Shares were ridiculously lost and companies lost a lot of money, with little or no dividends to shareholders. The BONUS CULTURE led to even more short-termism and a lot of institutions suffered a great loss, as witnessed by the 2008 recession (Trust me, that recession was way overdue). Today, most British and American companies, due to short-termism and over-reliance on market shares, as opposed to productivity, continue to suffer the fate of poor managerial decisions and mismanagement in today's highly volatile business environment.

2. Nigeria should not follow in these steps. I KNOW NAIRALANDERS SAY NOT TO COMPARE OTHER (WESTERN) COUNTRIES TO NIGERIA BUT THAT'S RUBBISH!!! THERE IS NO " DO IT THE NAIJA WAY". COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES SHOULD ALWAYS BE IMPLEMENTED TO UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN COUNTRIES, WHAT MAKES THE OTHER COUNTRY BETTER THAN THE OTHER AND WHAT THE OTHER COUNTRY COULD TO CATCH UP WITH THE OTHER.
Japan and China should provide classic examples to how the transfer of technology and information can be beneficial to an economy. I did a presentation on this in my final year and I did very well. I know what I am saying.

- Japan has no land, no natural resources and limited human capital (Don't forget what the war did to Japan's economy). But they realised what they lacked and how to go around it. Their economy blew up because of their competitive advantage - CONSUMER ELECTRONICS. They imported technology from America. LET'S NOT FORGET THE ADVANTAGES OF THE AMERICAN DEFENCE SYSTEM TO THE BUSINESS ECONOMY - A LOT OF SPIN-OFF COMPANIES INHERITED THEIR TECHNOLOGY, THANKS TO AMERICAN DEFENCE PROJECTS. SILICON VALLEY SPRINGS TO MIND ON SUCH OCCASION. THIS IS WHERE THE BUSINESS ENTREPRENEURS MAKE THEIR WEALTH FROM DIFFERENT VENTURES - MOSTLY OUT OF PROJECTS INITIATED BY THE AMERICAN DEFENCE SYSTEM OR BY A POLL OF VERY TALENTED INDIVIDUALS, THANKS TO GOVERNMENT FUNDING AND JOINT VENTURES WITH COMPANIES OR UNIVERSITIES. Anyway, that's another story.

- One of Japan's many fortunes came from semi-conductors. (YES, REALLY!). The semi-conductor was patented in America, from a government (defence) project. The TV industry profited from the semi-conductor but they gradually paid no attention to the advantages of semi-conductors and carried on manufacturing big old TVs (YOU KNOW HOW AMERICANS LIKE THEIR STUFF BIG!). The Japanese guys realised they could do a lot with the semi-conductor. In came SONY, PANASONIC, TOSHIBA AND PIONEER. They took over the global consumer electronics market globally. I bet you have a Japanese TV in your household! The technology from the TV industry gave birth to other consumer electronics market - THE DIGITAL CAMERA, FOR EXAMPLE. CANON, NIKON, PENTAX, etc. These companies produced compact goods, in accordance with the Japanese people's traditional regard for simplicity and compactness. The demand for goods grew domestically, and these obviously spread globally like a disease and people adapted to the goods. In other words, Japan became the king of consumer electronics. Don't get me wrong - these companies, as other MNCs, have suffered losses and other business calamities but they built individual brands. Those brands still stand until date and continue to strive for quality and performance. (Yeah, the recession is a b**ch...)

- Japan's economy worked not because of the availability of human capital, but the efficiency and effectiveness of the human capital. In the car industry, they took over the American market that way. "Just in Time" - (JIT) or kaizen, was a way of reducing waste and minimising error. On the other hand, GM and co. were busy handing out massive bonuses to executives and ignoring the labour force. Thus, they suffered the stiff competition from the Japanese car makers. The American companies suffered badly. The car manufacturing industry was revolutionized. However, as with any manufacturing sector, the car market became cyclical. Bring on another financial re-engineering. (This is why some American car companies were bailed out by the government - to keep the pride of the nation, if anything, in my opinion).

- Most Japanese companies in different sectors work as a group, not as competitors. Obviously, competition exists but these companies inter-link with each other, cross-owning shares and sitting on committee boards along other organs of the economy - banks, suppliers, management and government. Ideas were shared and issues were quickly resolved. This fuelled the growth of the economy even quicker. However, the Japanese economy continues to slide into recession and companies under-perform due to lack of labour mobility (there is/was a "job-for-life" incentive for senior management, therefore restricting job mobility for other employees), A LACK OF WOMEN IN THE LABOUR MARKET - WOMEN EITHER WORK PART-TIME OR HAVE LOW-SKILLED JOBS: SAME IN NIGERIA (CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG), lack of training and growth opportunities for employees.

- China, as of 2011, initiated a FIVE-YEAR PLAN to develop its economy based on the dissemination of information and improving its technological advances. However, issues like pollution, corruption, monopoly - (state ownership/control of businesses), bribery and most importantly, human resource capital continue to present challenges which the government must tackle tactfully and competently. I AM A HR PROFESSIONAL SO I COULDN'T PLACE ANY MORE EMPHASIS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD HUMAN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT TO AN ECONOMY!!! I say this because there is nothing more important than job security because in China, job security is so poor someone might work for a day just to eat/buy a pair of shoes and call it a day or move on to another city/village to start an entirely different lifestyle - crazy. Therefore, job security needs to be established for a successful economy to grow and develop.

China is investing heavily in technology. The fact that they have initiated many joint ventures with multinational companies and have continued to train and develop highly-skilled workers in EVERY INDUSTRY shows how much China is gunning for global economic recognition on the global stage (since officially joining World Trade Organisation in 2001, they've yearned for global recognition). WTO means more global trade opportunities, increased FDI and socio-economic benefits. NIGERIA HAS BEEN A MEMBER OF WTO SINCE GOD-KNOWS AND WE'RE TWICE AS FAR BEHIND CHINA!!!). Moreover, Chinese conglomerates continue to buy out foreign companies like a pair of trainers on display waiting to be sold. THEY ONLY JUST BOUGHT OUT WEETABIX LAST WEEK. SINCE 2008, THEY HAVE SPENT £12BN BUYING OUT BRITISH BUSINESSES - FACT!!! THEY DO NOT DO THIS BECAUSE THEY CAN. THEY DO IT AS A WAY OF DISSEMINATING INFORMATION AND IMPROVING TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES, AS WELL AS PROVIDING SOPHISTICATED JOBS FOR THEIR FAST-GROWING, WELL-EDUCATED YOUTHS SO THAT THEY CAN CONTINUE TO HARVEST AND HARBOUR THE GROWTH OF THE ECONOMY.

3. In summary, THE MALL(S) IS/ARE ATTRACTIVE BUT NOT THE SOLUTION TO THE ECONOMY. It is true that fast-moving consumer goods yield significant benefits to the economy but for Nigeria, what really are the benefits? WHY GO SHOPPING IN ENUGU AND GO TO THE NORTH ONLY TO BE GREETED BY TERRORISM AND MENACE? There is no point. Socially, a mall might seem an interesting idea but what about other industries? Are the goods manufactured locally? (obviously not). We need a nationwide strategy to develop the (manufacturing) activities and economy of the state - Nigeria.

- I am not saying these policies would work if followed pragmatically. Obviously, there are cultural differences, beliefs and values we need to consider when implementing such policies. These should be aligned with the human resource (management) practices designed to address such differences - compensation, performance, appraisal and employee relations remain other issues.

- Nigeria has the CAPITAL, AVAILABILITY OF NATURAL RESOURCES WITH ABUNDANT LOW, SEMI-SKILLED OR HIGHLY-SKILLED WORKERS NECESSARY TO ENCOURAGE THE DOMESTIC PRODUCTION OF GOODS AND SERVICES.

THE ISSUE OF RESTRUCTURING THE FISCAL POLICIES REMAIN A POLITICAL ISSUE. OH, I TOTALLY FORGOT I WAS TALKING ABOUT NIGERIA! THESE POLITICIANS DO NOT KNOW THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE IN RELATION TO THE ECONOMIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE STATE. ON THAT NOTE, I RESERVE MY COMMENTS!

armyofone: Nice, i hope they have them all over nigeria. no need for someone in Kano coming for excursion to see the blessed mall of lagos/abuja.

manny4life:

Nigeria WILL ALWAYS be Nigeria, and nothing will change that

Yes, I do understand that we have to solve things our own way. I'll be lying if I said I did not understand your views, however, I'm a STRONG proponent for free market policies, however, I do believe in fairness. I believe that our govt has to do the right things to encourage domestic production (Important KEY factor) for sustainability.

I've always stated this, rather than treating the symptoms to a sickness, attack the sickness itself. Once the sickness is attacked, the symptoms will gradually fade away, but doing it the other way around, in as long as the sickness is there, and symptoms gone, it's only a matter of time before the symptoms come back again, and when then come back, they come back two times stronger and resistant. SLS devalued the currency, tried harder to limit demand in FOREX, obviously so people will not import anymore and the shocker came back on him. The demand for FOREX became higher than he imagined.

Like I've stated, Nigerians has to solve it's problem by itself without any rule book from IMF or World Bank or U.S. as a model, however, we can always look at their policies as an example and know where they were successful and failed, and make our policies different from theirs.

We talk about China a whole lot, but China is more friendly in terms of manufacturing, anybody and everybody can manufacture because there's less resisting forces AND monopoly in the market. What kills us in Nigeria is not one single thing, but for Nigeria to encourage domestic production, we need to look at

1. Resource availability - this includes availability of Land, Minerals and Resources, Human Capital (we think we don, but we don't have the know-how), Technology etc. This is to encourage boosting of manufacturing. In addition to that, we need INFRASTRUCTURES. Without electricity, transport network, export facilities and networks, etc Nigeria cannot manufacture on a LARGE locally consumption scale to meet demand, talk less of exporting hence making importation an option.

2. Capital - Without CAPITAL, everything is useless... This is where SLS is needed but unfortunately, he's busy sponsoring irrelevant cashless economy where the platform isn't ready.

3. Restructuring of the entire system (fiscal polices)- Nigeria needs to check on monopoly, there are businesses who monopolize the market because they have favors from the govt. There has to be less barriers to entry to encourage anyone and everyone to produce anything and everything. Obviously, you can't do no 3 with out no 1 and 2. Our tax codes and system needs to be revamped, we need tougher sanctions on import policies, but not without encouraging local production like giving out subsidies say in Agriculture.

I can continue but I'll stop, but you get the idea. My point is that I want local/domestic production INCREASED, so that regardless of where we sell them, there's competition and less import which will be great to our economy.

Godogwu:

Again, I would say I understand your argument and I can tell that you are really dwelling into the Economical part of this discussion with which you make some very good points. Nevertheless I would like to differ with you in some places; first of all I was not going off the topic and I was definitely not trying to de-mean people on this forum as you rightly said its just a forum. I was just tackling some points in general that I saw reading along the comments on this forum and basically not only yours. Yes or maybe the US, UK and some other first world countries had electricity sorted out before dwelling into these malls but I assure you that the plan of building malls didn't come along till electricity was out of the way. On the other hand in Nigeria, the factor of electricity has not been sorted out but yet people need these such places,; it generates employment no matter the level of income the employees get( keeps them off the street), it also brings about tourism and generates revenue for the country in some way...... Then again if something were to drastically reduce the price of oil to $5 per barrel, that would affect a whole lot of countries heavily includIng Nigeria but will still not make Nigeria as Somalia because Somalia suffers other things than just the lack of oil. With your level of intelligence I'm sure you don't also believe that it's the politicians who steal money that are able to afford SUVs or Luxury cars , because I'm sure people in government don't make up to 10% of the population and there are engineers, doctors, nurses, accountants, CEOs, lawyers, musicians, actors etc who make their living solely on their work and salaries and I'm sure they are not eating into public funds when they buy a Range Rover or a Land Cruiser. I am also not comparing these first world countries to Nigeria, obviously they are better in terms of infrastructure, revenue, GDP and all that, but also the cost of living in those places is way higher than that of Nigeria. In Nigeria you can get a 3 bedroom house in Lagos or Abuja or wherever depending on the area from 250k-1.5m annually ( on the median) but in the US the minimum you'll see is $550 a month( and this would probably be some ghetto area where they shoot and kill every other day) but the middle class end would range from $800-$1600 every month.

My main point is that some Nigerians should try and stop degrading and dejecting their country because it hasn't greatly favored them because their are people in Nigeria that wouldn't leave for anything but some see these first world countries as the God's own country or the only way out but end up in the US working minial jobs and it is very hard or virtually impossible to climb the social ladder in any of these countries. ( I got sentimental in my last paragraph forgive that.)

Olodostein:

To know where you are going, you have to know where you are come from. Economics makes the world go round.

I understand that you have good intentions but for the most part, good intentions are always not enough.

Electricity ushered in a new age of inventions and economic revolution. Without electricity, would you have digital computers to process payment at the "Big Malls". Without electricity, how would you light them up? The ironic and quite frustrating thing is that, the little electricity supply that are allocated to road side welders will be used to illuminate these unproductive malls for longer hours. Thereby, indirectly putting these welders and others like them out of business.

I would visit Fela's shrine as a tourist than I would these malls.

I sarcastically compared Nigeria to Somalia in such scenario because we earn about 90% of Forex from crude. And if Forex were to dry up because of drastic drop in crude price in the international market, in such a baseless economy, what forex would you use to import goods? What else do you sell the outside world that brings in Forex? These malls will dry up overnight. Consequently we will have inflation for essential goods brought from overseas and deflation for some other products.

Ofcourse we have hard working people who rake in huge amount that can afford expensive things. But you have to be a Tarzan to be in those category. Honesty is becoming a taboo in our society. The Moral fabric is rotten. People get contracts and jobs these days by bribing their way up leaving merited people behind.

In first world countries, there is value for your money no matter how expensive. Besides, they have industries that brings them in much needed Forex as compared to ours. If my memory serves me well, Exon mobil's revenue is on par with that of Nigeria. Can you imagine that? Just one fortune 500 company!!!

A one room self contain in Abuja town is 450,000. I have come across a lot of Diaspora's who wants to settle down in ABJ because of the relative development but couldn't because it is way too expensive. Politicians controls the real estate market here my friend. Some lands goes for 300million naira and up.

I will leave the analysis of the Nigeria states economy for another thread.

Our nation is fundamentally flawed at the end of the day. Nobody saw the security menace as it is today coming? Other social menace may follow suit.

Olodostein:

To know where you are going, you have to know where you are come from. Economics makes the world go round.

I understand that you have good intentions but for the most part, good intentions are always not enough.

Electricity ushered in a new age of inventions and economic revolution. Without electricity, would you have digital computers to process payment at the "Big Malls". Without electricity, how would you light them up? The ironic and quite frustrating thing is that, the little electricity supply that are allocated to road side welders will be used to illuminate these unproductive malls for longer hours. Thereby, indirectly putting these welders and others like them out of business.

I would visit Fela's shrine as a tourist than I would these malls.

I sarcastically compared Nigeria to Somalia in such scenario because we earn about 90% of Forex from crude. And if Forex were to dry up because of drastic drop in crude price in the international market, in such a baseless economy, what forex would you use to import goods? What else do you sell the outside world that brings in Forex? These malls will dry up overnight. Consequently we will have inflation for essential goods brought from overseas and deflation for some other products.

Ofcourse we have hard working people who rake in huge amount that can afford expensive things. But you have to be a Tarzan to be in those category. Honesty is becoming a taboo in our society. The Moral fabric is rotten. People get contracts and jobs these days by bribing their way up leaving merited people behind.

In first world countries, there is value for your money no matter how expensive. Besides, they have industries that brings them in much needed Forex as compared to ours. If my memory serves me well, Exon mobil's revenue is on par with that of Nigeria. Can you imagine that? Just one fortune 500 company!!!

A one room self contain in Abuja town is 450,000. I have come across a lot of Diaspora's who wants to settle down in ABJ because of the relative development but couldn't because it is way too expensive. Politicians controls the real estate market here my friend. Some lands goes for 300million naira and up.

I will leave the analysis of the Nigeria states economy for another thread.

Our nation is fundamentally flawed at the end of the day. Nobody saw the security menace as it is today coming? Other social menace may follow suit.