Things I hate 2: Nigerian styled importation
Posted by trae_z on June 3rd, 2007
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.
June 5th, 2007 at 11:08 am
This is so true. Our people are not being encouraged well enough, that’s why we keep having to import. We have lots of manpower if only we could have more factories in Naija. It also will some lots of unemployment problems. I hope the government will do something about this.
June 5th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Hahahaha, liking the way you “entered’ those radio talk show people. Their own too much.
On the topic at hand, you shouldn’t expect anything different from a country that hasn’t developed its manufacturing sector. We are not giving enough focus to export products. Ever since oil was discovered, agriculture has been given the back room and while growing up, I was unfortunately made to think farmers are poor, illiterate and have no future. Now I know better…
It starts with the government and an educated citizenry…
June 6th, 2007 at 11:39 am
You are looking at it from the perspective of the producers. Look at it from the perspective of the consumer. If you were living on a salary of 25k a month and you had two products; one foreign that costs N200 and one domestic that costs N500 would u buy the domestic one? Imports make economic sense, and ultimately that is what drives business decisions.
The sad fact of the matter is that the domestic business climate is atrocious and it makes domestic production for most things impossible. The big businessess will thrive, as will certain niches like pure water (even though that is not as lucrative any more) but the majority of manufacturing will not be viable. If the business climate became favorable you wouldn’t have to be asking people to start businesses, you couldn’t stop them. The offshoot of this is that we are developing a pretty robust services industry almost as an unintended consequence of the manufacturing issues.
June 8th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
[...] Nigerian blogger, Trae, concluded a two-part piece of things he dislikes about his country Nigeria in Things I hate 2: Nigerian styled importation I hate the importation craze in Naija; yes I really do hate it. [...]
July 12th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
I found the analogy at the end funny