I hate the importation craze in Naija; yes I really do hate it.

I know importation is necessary in a globalized economy. What, with the comparative advantage theory and all; but Nigerians have taken it too far. Sometimes when I’m walking by and sight stacks upon stacks of imported items, a lot very storage dusty I shake my head and wonder when they’ll ever be completely sold out. In my opinion supply enormously outnumbers demand. As some people say all that remains now is for us to start importing tooth picks. Close your eyes and imagine Dayo Adeneye and Kenny Ogungbe of Kennismusic bragging about their imported tooth picks (P. Diddy style) on TV and you’d get my drift.

I hate it when I hear Nigerians say with relish (instead of with shame…well that’s how I opine they should feel because that’s definitely how I feel when I hear them) that the goods they’re selling are imported or the stuff they’re working with are imported, can’t be gotten any where in the country and so them and their business are the real deal.

I also hate the customer obsession with owning or identifying with imported stuff. Close your eyes here and Imagine Nike and Doshima of Cool FM Abuja on the radio program Girl Talk with their phonetics, annoying girlish demeanor and all.

Nike: Have you got the latest in fashion XYZ? All my girlfriends seem to have it.
Doshima: Yes I have, I got it at ABC boutique after watching “Spiderman 7” at the MN cinemas.
Nike: Uuh uuh (doing the Girl Talk shout)! Girl you rock, let me see.
Nike (after inspecting the piece): No Honey this is not right, it’s Aba made, shame on you.

We should stop the import craze and promote our own. Starting with the government, they should encourage our indigenous manufacturers through solving the electric power problem and checking smuggling of illegal goods into the country.

Honestly look at it this way; this is what our degrading importation culture can be compared to:

A husband being proud that when it comes to sex…making babies, his neighbour and best friend regularly gets the honour of impregnating his wife and so all he does as husband is peck her on the cheeks and pay her bills.

Note: 1) pricing as used here is not the dictionary meaning of the seller fixing a sum for a good/service but the Nigerian parlance meaning of a buyer bargaining for a good/service. 2) To dash someone something means to give that thing away. 3) Aboki is a word used to mean a poor Hausa man involved in a low income trade/job.

Finding a blog that suits my taste in the Nigerian blogosphere makes me really happy. The feeling is almost as if I won a lottery. So yesterday I “discovered” the blog Aijuswanarite owned by a guy called “Snazzy”; a 2006 Batch B youth corper like me; and I spent the better part of the night and this morning reading his entries (at this point the Jiminy Cricket side of my conscience gives me knocks for wrong use of time). And one of the entries titled “People are Cheap, Things are Expensive” struck an inspirational cord in me. The summary of the entry is that some Nigerians don’t mind being over-charged for ostentatious goods or services but would haggle like a church rat when buying goods or services from poor sellers.

Very true, so let me highlight two of such cases that I’ve witnessed that stuck to me for a very long time and made me really sick.

Sometime in November last year in the early days of my youth service when I was still settling down into my place of primary assignment and equipping myself with bachelorhood skills I went to the market with two of my female corper colleagues. The way one haggled over frozen fish disgusted me. The fish was cost at 70 Naira but she spoke “long grammar” in a nose-in-the-air manner, broke into vernacular (the seller was also Igbo) and used the we’re-poor-corpers line just to buy the fish at 60 Naira. The seller pleaded with her to be considerate and that the price was worth it at 70 Naira but in the end she left her to buy from a rival seller at 60 Naira. I’m pretty sure that in her mind the turned down seller cursed my colleague and that the rival sold out just to make sure she made some sales for the day.

The second incident was at a cyber café about two years ago. An over-weight, Igbo guy in his early thirties was seated near me (a customer as well) and in the manner he carried himself and spoke he fit the bill of the wealthy womanizing type. He was making life miserable for a poor Hausa shoe shiner over change. Apparently they had agreed on 15 Naira as the price for the service but he refused to give the aboki the 50 Naira note he had in his hands until the aboki found him 35 Naira change. Here’s a guy that’ll probably later on spend thousands on beer and on his girlfriend but didn’t deem it right to dash the poor aboki 50 Naira. The annoying part was that he felt smart ass about whole thing. I swear that day I wanted to puke.

That’s why although I’ve not got much I take it easy with the pricing bit. Yes when I see sellers displaying their wares in the hot sun who’re not smiling I try not to be a cheap ass.