₦airaland Forum

Kalixx:
Nigeria is as poor as sh*t.

You talk about potentials of human capital?

Whether a human's brain works or not, one thing is sure -- his belly would work.

There are so many hungry individuals in this country that are at the same time unproductive -- chiefly because of ignorance, lack of education and tools. They can't create value.

Even the graduates, what can they produce? Yes, what if there are no employers whatsoever? No govt jobs, no private jobs. How do these graduates create value then? Employers, government are in the end, human beings -- and there has to be a strong shift in orientation in order to bring awareness and knowledge to school leavers and graduates to create employment, even if slipshod. There also has to be a balance of goods produced and services. Nowadays, everybody is saying 'Teach me freelancing'. If everyone is an online freelancer, who's producing goods? Reliance on importation would keep dragging us back. We have to think of systemic and the most cost-effective ways to produce the most, with the least efforts. Until then, poverty would ravage this country from pole to pole.

Many literates still view wealth as piece of paper called money, but if that were so they should travel down to Mozambique where they will earn 10 million mozambique dollars and it wont be able to afford toilet roll. We as a nation have very very poor understanding of money, societal structures, wealth creation, factors of production, global trade and economics.

That is why a fresh graduate by default begins to think of a system he can quickly plug himself just to make money and have a roof over his head. This money and economic illiteracy is the reason why we fail so miserably in properly evaluating state leadership and the performance of our rulers by and large.

I have deliberately decided to skip the ubiquitous illiteracy and regressive Northern section of the country, parochial approach to all and sundry and sentimental adoption of religion, even though this is the crucial amplifier to this nation's distress.

But if truly Nigeria would be saved, the south has to play a major role especially in two things: value and education from the very grassroots. And then, that education should beam serious focus on two subjects: history and economics. Schools dont teach economics well enough. Its the most important subject.

slimdamatrix1:
Always endeavour to confirm what you spill. San Francisco is the city in the world with the most billionaires. Smh

No need adding lies to prove a point.

Use Google. Its educative and factual.

AgamaProf:
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.

winterfell007:
Population is the greatest problem militating against our growth. We are too damn populated and it affects our equitable distribution of resources drastically

Speak2klein:
In 2003, Dangote set out to build 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)
[
https://medium.com/@kleinuduh/is-nigeria-a-truly-wealthy-nation-7f839d838a6c

veeshock:
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.

itsme01:
why not check the map on poverty on the front page and come back for your answer

Abagworo:
The bolded is a big fat lie. A millionaire is someone worth 360 million Naira and Port-Harcourt alone has more than 50,000 of such not to talk of Lagos, Kano, Aba, Onitsha, Abuja and other places.

Starboytwo:
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"

Damsonkc:
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.

Daniel058:
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 !

Mac2016:
GDP in a country with great divide in wealth could be misleading....
For the political stratum Nigeria GDP supercedes that of Luxembourg and it is the best in the world.

For the bourgeois, it is way less than average quoted for Nigeria
Again is Luxembourg sef richer than Norway or the US with less GDP than theirs?

Abeg economists shd get a new measuring criterion...

Speak2klein:
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

AgamaProf:
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.

Kalixx:
Nigeria is as poor as sh*t.

You talk about potentials of human capital?

Whether a human's brain works or not, one thing is sure -- his belly would work.

There are so many hungry individuals in this country that are at the same time unproductive -- chiefly because of ignorance, lack of education and tools. They can't create value.

Even the graduates, what can they produce? Yes, what if there are no employers whatsoever? No govt jobs, no private jobs. How do these graduates create value then? Employers, government are in the end, human beings -- and there has to be a strong shift in orientation in order to bring awareness and knowledge to school leavers and graduates to create employment, even if slipshod. There also has to be a balance of goods produced and services. Nowadays, everybody is saying 'Teach me freelancing'. If everyone is an online freelancer, who's producing goods? Reliance on importation would keep dragging us back. We have to think of systemic and the most cost-effective ways to produce the most, with the least efforts. Until then, poverty would ravage this country from pole to pole.

Many literates still view wealth as piece of paper called money, but if that were so they should travel down to Mozambique where they will earn 10 million mozambique dollars and it wont be able to afford toilet roll. We as a nation have very very poor understanding of money, societal structures, wealth creation, factors of production, global trade and economics.

That is why a fresh graduate by default begins to think of a system he can quickly plug himself just to make money and have a roof over his head. This money and economic illiteracy is the reason why we fail so miserably in properly evaluating state leadership and the performance of our rulers by and large.

I have deliberately decided to skip the ubiquitous illiteracy and regressive Northern section of the country, parochial approach to all and sundry and sentimental adoption of religion, even though this is the crucial amplifier to this nation's distress.

But if truly Nigeria would be saved, the south has to play a major role especially in two things: value and education from the very grassroots. And then, that education should beam serious focus on two subjects: history and economics. Schools dont teach economics well enough. Its the most important subject.

PrecisionFx:
Not corruption and sentiments, resource control and true federalism

kiddapunk:
good evening sir, and what a great read you have here. As an aspiring entrepreneur i find your economic knowledge to be of massive value, so pls can i have your contact so i can get.more infos from you. i'd be really delighted.

tstx:
Permission to repost this on my site..

Speak2klein:
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

frank417:
Ever wondered why there is poor resource control and why we don't actually practice true federalism?

Gerrard59:
If Nigeria's economy is that figure, she would be gracing the G20 summits every year as a member of the top 20 economies globally and not rely on invites which aren't even consistent. And no, Nigeria does not have a population problem. The OP mentioned China and India which are far more populated Nigeria yet are far richer. He was even lenient by not mentioning Brazil and Indonesia which have similar populations like Nigeria but citizens are richer than Nigerians while economies are bigger than Nigeria's.

@Topic: Hopefully, naysayers get to read and more importantly assimilate these figures because when one tells them that Nigeria is not a rich country and her citizens are poor, they flare up. Regarding solutions, I cannot proffer solutions for problems I did not cause.

Rosskii:
I don't believe this for a minute.



Considering India have a population of OVER 1 BILLION PEOPLE, it is senseless comparing their number of billionaires with ours. Not that having billionaires means much anyway.

yelanst:
Please, provide references for those figures and assertions you dished out

Rosskii:
Dude, those Russian billionaires are the type you would not accept as legit were they to be Nigerian. They are tied to Putin and the Russian aristocracy like bees to honey.

As for France, UK and the rest, they have so many billionaires for the same reason they are richer and more developed, etc, ie because they robbed the entire world of its resources, subjugated its peoples, and cornered their resources over the last 300 years. That cannot possibly be the path for Nigeria to develop, so don't expect us to match them in number of billionaires.

Abagworo:
The bolded is a big fat lie. A millionaire is someone worth 360 million Naira and Port-Harcourt alone has more than 50,000 of such not to talk of Lagos, Kano, Aba, Onitsha, Abuja and other places.

Starboytwo:
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"

suskumayaya:
I feel a lot of people here comment based on patriotism. The actual fact is we have potentials but it has not cascade to any meaningful economic development. Of course, we are better off pre 1999 in all ramifications but we are not even close to where we are suppose to be in the economic development curve.

olaboy1:
Nothing wrong with our huge population, we just need to find ways to improve on our productivity.
And it’s something as simple as having 24/7 electricity and this is going to improve the educational sector by 100% which automatically turns into wealth creation. A properly educated person will contribute significantly to our economy.

It’s such a shame the government is not doing enough to fix the power problem. Power sector, agriculture, education and health should take up 75% of our annual budget at least for 5 consecutive years.

For all Nigerians to live comfortably we need to find ways to jerk up our annual budget to 20trillion naira and keep our currency stable and at the same time readjust our taxation system so the high earners pay more.
Nigerian government should make it so easy to walk in to do business by ensuring implementation of capital punishment for bribery and corruption. A society or even a family that doesn't inspire trust and confidence will never prosper.