At the just concluded Lagos International Trade Fair, the trading was fair. The pricing was also fair. Buyers came, saw, but couldn’t buy. Their pockets which had been getting leaner by the day would not let them buy. MGBOJI KELECHUKWU brings the harrowing experiences of those desiring, but unable to acquiring.
Buki stood at the Japan stand accommodating Panasonic and its eye-popping products, eyeing wares she could take home, but couldn’t, because of her pocket. She said she had to let go of her desire to go home with a Midea MM720 20-litre microwave oven because the price exceeded her budget. She also complained about the prices of some other items which caught her fancy. They were also way out of her reach.
The problem for Buki wasn’t really the pricing which, at such a gathering, is always comparatively lower than the normal market prices. The real problem was Buki’s financial capacity. The challenge wasn’t peculiar to her. Hundreds of visitors to the fair had similar constraint and everybody felt the impact, both the sellers and prospective buyers. Are Lagosians going broke?
Hardship in city of wealth
Lagos, Nigeria’s and the world’s fastest-growing city is expected to become a megacity by 2020, just about two years away. This is so because it is a city that holds lots of promises for its dwellers and lots of dreams for those viewing it from afar. Talk about Lagos, especially to the uninitiated, that is, those who have never set their feet there, and they will tell you it is a city whose corridors and streets are paved with gold.
Perhaps that partially informs its appellation as the nation’s ‘economic nerve-centre’, a sobriquet that could be justified by the quantum of business being done in the state per second. All you need to do, for many Nigerians, is just to find your way to the city and your life will never be the same again.
Its huge population which is daily increasing is a valid argument for wannabes. The question would be, if it is a difficult place to make it, why do people go there every day and find it difficult to return to their original homes? Without doubt, the population and other opportunities are there to help anybody with dreams actualise such dreams.
Curiously, with its booming economic and population growth comes a paradox of poverty pangs: a substantial number of its residents suffer in unprecedented poverty, according to official figures and stories of the people themselves.
How did we get here?
At the International Trade Fair that ended last Sunday in the state, both sellers and buyers were in mourning mood for lost opportunities due to lean pockets of the consumers.
Marketing Executive of Panasonic Nigeria, Mr Olumide Adebayo, lamented to Saturday Tribune. “Many visitors come desiring to buy but it turns out they have come for mere window shopping rather than active purchases. They don’t have money. Even the very few that can spare some money to shop around are making little purchases on bargain hunting. On our side, though turnover has been low, we are trying to make out something from the few visitors.”
He appealed to the media to help draw the attention of the government to the increasing hardship in the country and the state of the economy. He stressed that the government needed to open up the economy so that by this time next year things would have started getting better.
“The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. Someone who has not eaten, what is he coming to buy? We are tired of this scenario. Here at the fair, we are not supposed to be seated. But because business is very slow, you see us sitting down.
The previous years were never as dull. Even at closing hours, customers would be all over the place begging us to sell to them. But all that is gone,” he lamented.
Window shoppers?
Adebayo likely had the likes of Wunmi in mind when talking about mere window shoppers.
She came in company with a friend to the fair on Tuesday, the fourth day of the event, with the intention to buy a couple of daily-need items but eventually realised that she could not afford the items she had drawn up for purchase. After picking a few items at the Food Town pavilion where the ladies had come to buy cooking spices, they decided on suspending further purchases except critically important ones. “Even if I can’t buy, I can afford to look around,” Wunmi said with amusement that drew the attention of others at the stand.
Buki, Wunmi and hundreds of other visitors to the fair didn’t come all the way to the busy venue, braving the traffic stress caused by the increase in human and vehicular movement around the area, just to feed their eyes with the lovely products on display. They came to trade but their finances weren’t fair.
Interestingly, attendance at this year’s 10-day festival beat all previous years’ numbers. Two thousand, five hundred exhibitors came from 20 countries of the world with over 500,000 expected visitors. But the numbers didn’t translate into real business for all sides.
At Food Town, the sole stand flying American emblem at the fair, Mrs Eucharia Onyemelukwere told Saturday Tribune that the state of the economy was obviously the problem.
She said customers seemed to be buying only their critical needs, disclosing that spices like curry and thyme were the major sales driver for them unlike in previous years when customers would buy anything.
…And the desperate job seekers
Perhaps nothing better underscores the growing hardship in the mega city than its growing army of job seekers, graduates and would-be graduates, who stormed the event arena looking for just anything to do to earn a token.
Onyemelukwere, Marketing Manager of Food Town, a spice manufacturing firm, stated that over a hundred job seekers had approached her firm but they could only take 10 persons. “There were over 50 of them that came yesterday (Monday). And more than 50 have come today (Tuesday). We could only take 10. That is the number we can manage,” she said.
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Stellarchem Industries Limited, Mr Ikpong Umoh, spoke of his frustration this way: “This year’s trade fair is quite unlike the Lagos Trade Fair we used to know. All we see here are hundreds of unemployed graduates begging for any opportunity. It has never been this bad.”
He noted that if government policies were favourable and conducive for growth, the millions of unemployed graduates milling around the fair for makeshift jobs would have secured well-paid jobs, while blaming the situation largely on some of unfavourable bilateral trade agreements which he said the Federal Government had signed in utter disregard for the impact on local businesses.
“Nigeria has signed many bilateral trade agreements with other countries. Some of these agreements have hamstrung the regulatory agencies. They (the government agencies) have no choice but to continue to open the borders. In addition, all government agencies have turned to revenue-generating outfits. Government is no longer giving them subventions. So, they are going on radical revenue drive under the guise of regulation drive. NAFDAC is not an exemption.
“They have to get the needed revenue from importers of these foreign products. Besides, they have to open the doors because government has signed agreements to open the doors. So, NAFDAC has no choice but to get as much revenue as they can from the importers,” said Umoh.
Saturday Tribune encountered many of these desperate job seekers who said that even if for just a week, they were ready to pick whatever prospective employers might have for them.
At Japan stand where over 50 business entities of Japan origin, including Sony, Panasonic and Yamaha, displayed their products, the job seekers were milling around on Monday and Tuesday begging for employment.
The marketing manager of Yamaha Nigeria who didn’t want his name in print said so many job seekers had approached their firm asking for whatever available job they could do while the fair would last.
“An uncountable number of job seekers have approached us and they keep pouring in asking for any available jobs. But we can only engage a few hands here at the fair,” he said.
He said provision of jobs for Nigerians was the major reason Yamaha Nigeria established a plant in Amuwo Odofin, Lagos. “We have an assembly plant here; we are not just importing and trading. We have over 58 staff at our Amuwo-Odofin. And we are creating many more jobs through our various distribution channels: those that sell our spare-parts, those that sell our engine oil and the company blending our lubricants and so many others,” said the manager.
65% of residents poor, slum dwellers –Reports
According to Justice and Empowerment Initiatives Nigeria, 65 per cent of the people living in Lagos are urban poor who live in slums and settlements with no access to basic amenities and infrastructures such as roads, electricity, drinking water, healthcare, education and waste disposal system.
Extreme poverty was thought to be limited to rural parts of the country where access to basic amenities and infrastructures are almost non-existent. Surprisingly, a study conducted by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) found that 22.1 per cent of Nigeria’s urban population is vulnerable to poverty while only 14.4 per cent of the rural population is vulnerable.
According to the OPHI, 20 per cent of the Lagos population is vulnerable to poverty and the intensity of economic deprivation in the state currently stands at 41.1 per cent.
In Lagos, two out of three residents, according to the survey, live in the city’s notorious slums—settlements built to accommodate the overcrowded communities. Many families and individuals who inhabit these slums reportedly came to Lagos from other regions of Nigeria with the hope of escaping the rural poverty, deprivation and political instability of their home states. Many may be rueing their relocation decisions now.
Rich, poor dichotomy
There is said to be a large gap existing between the wealthy and the poor in the city. While the wealthy continue to climb the economic ladder, many of their poor compatriots are seen to remain at the bottom.
From 1996 to 2004, poverty level in the state was calculated to have risen to 53 per cent. In 2014, the Lagos State Bureau of Statistics under the state Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget published the state poverty profile which indicated a sharp increase in population of residents living below the poverty line.
Based on data collected between 2004 and 2014 by the United Nations Global Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index published in 2015, the poverty level in Lagos stood at 8.5 per cent.
In 2017, for instance, it was reported that police officers raided the town of Otodo-Gbame, leaving thousands of poor Lagosians homeless. The raid was believed to be part of deals with wealthy investors who desired more waterfront land. Thus, rather than lifting the poor from slums in Lagos, wealthy investors are allegedly bulldozing waterfront slums to build high-rises and luxury hotels. To underscore Lagos poverty condition, a report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) showed that from January 1 to April 15, 2018, 1,849 cases of Lassa fever were recorded in 21 states in Nigeria, and Lagos was among them.
No early Xmas shopping
Ifeanyi, an employee of a private school in the Ejigbo area of the state, lamented how he couldn’t go to the trade fair for Christmas shopping ahead of the Yuletide, a tradition he had kept in the past.
He told Saturday Tribune that his wife constantly reminded him about the trade fair till three days to the end but he would constantly divert the topic each time she brought it up. He said he continued to prevaricate until she gave up on that plan.
Goods everywhere, no buyers
Foreign exhibitors from China, Japan, India, Indonesia, Ghana, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey, Cameroon, Kenya and Singapore flooded the fair. Other countries at the fair were Jamaica, Republic of Benin, South Africa and the European Union.
Activity survey conducted by Saturday Tribune among the exhibitors and some visitors during the period of the fair revealed that even though more attendance was recorded and there was increased traffic to the fair, all these never translated to encouraging buying and selling.
According to Chairman, Trade Promotion Board, Mr Gabriel Idahosa, companies numbering over 400 came from China, Japan, India and other Asian countries. China alone, occupying two expansive pavilions, had over 200 companies in attendance with Japan and Indian firms following closely.
Even exhibitors from Ghana numbered close to 50 with Cameroon also making a strong showing with its peculiar products. But the joy of both sellers and buyers was cut short by serious financial straits.
Ambode optimistic
Declaring the 10-day event closed, Dr Idiat Oluranti Adebule, the state deputy governor, who represented Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, said that the fair, held at the Tafawa Belewa Square (TBS), had translated into new networks, partnerships, investments, employment creation and increased contribution to the state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
While urging companies and organisations that participated at the event to use networks gathered from event to explore more opportunities in the state, the governor promised that his administration would continue providing conducive business environment to accommodate all shades of investors.
“I have no doubt that this year’s trade fair would contribute to the growth of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the socio-economic wellbeing of the citizens and businesses operating here in Lagos. As we expected, exhibitors and companies from different countries participated in fair. Use your network of contacts from the fair to explore more business opportunities in the state,” said the governor.
Rescue efforts
Sixty-two per cent of Nigerians reportedly live on less than $1.25 per day, which include residents of the state, considered to be the richest in the country.
Aware of this frightening incidence of poverty, the state government said it had put in place measures to alleviate poverty by introducing various programmes/projects such as Agriculture Youth Empowerment Scheme (Agric YES), Vocational Skills Acquisition Project (VSAP), Holiday Jobs for Students (HJS), Rice for Job Initiative (RJI) and Cage and Pen Culture Technology (CAPCT).
The state government also claimed to have created 300,000 direct and 600,000 indirect jobs through the Employment Trust Fund, while the Ministry of Wealth Creation and Employment was reportedly created to encourage entrepreneurship by using strategies that create wealth.
The question that is likely agitating minds is why all the efforts aren’t putting more money in people’s pockets?
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