Financial Times accuses Buhari of squandering jobs after The
visit of Mark Zuckerberg to Nigeria
Two events in the indefatigable city of Lagos have given
young entrepreneurs cause to swing between celebration and despair in a matter
of days. The former came with Mark Zuckerberg’s surprise appearance in the city
during his inaugural visit to Africa.
The Facebook chief executive delivered an endorsement of
Nigeria’s prospects as a centre of innovation on the continent. He praised the
talent and energy of the millennial coders, software developers and tech
incubator founders whom he met in Yaba, Lagos’s boisterous tech hub.
This, he said, “is where a lot of the future is going to be
built”. After meeting President Muhammadu Buhari, Zuckerberg said he saw people
in Nigeria doing what he did when he started Facebook: “Pushing through
challenges, building things that you want to see in the world.”
Some of them are trying to solve problems that successive
governments have identified but failed to fix, from waste management to
maternal mortality.
Inability of the federal government to implement laws
transparently By contrast with this vote of confidence, a second event
illustrated the scale of the challenges and how hard it is to build anything in
Nigeria. Worse, it gave young businesspeople reason to believe their biggest
obstacle, as the economy sinks into recession, is often government, and its
inability to implement laws transparently.
One morning just after Zuckerberg left, local authorities
arrived at a row of half a dozen shiny new businesses that opened this year in
the affluent district of Ikoyi, where I live.
Officials informed staff that the entire strip would be
demolished immediately. By that afternoon, bulldozers had levelled stores
including a bakery, a pharmacy, a dance studio and a juice bar.
Photos on Instagram show the owners, all women, standing in
front of the rubble having scrambled to haul their furniture and appliances out
before demolition began. “I was dumbfounded to see this place I have put so
much investment in gone before my eyes in the space of a few minutes,” says Ada
Osakwe, founder of The Nuli Juice Company, who opened her flagship store just
two months ago.
The owners of these businesses later learnt from the
authorities that their landlord had been served with notices stating that the
properties violated zoning laws. Osakwe explained that she had obtained permits
from the state government to serve food at her juice bar and café before
opening her doors in June, and was not informed when she did so of any zoning
problem with the property on which she had paid a year’s rent in advance.
Two days later, the state government announced it was
removing “unplanned commercial centres” and “roadside restaurants” that have “distorted”
government planning.
This is an . . . ongoing operation to sanitise the
environment,” said the press release.
The failure to serve notice to the tenants themselves led to
fury on social media and a wave of support for the afflicted businesses. Uber
Lagos added an option to its app to allow its customers to order juice
deliveries direct from Osakwe. Thirty staff faces an uncertain future as their
employers grapple with the costs of starting anew. Amid its worst economic
crisis in generations, Nigeria can ill afford to squander jobs. Official
statistics released last month found that in the second quarter of this year
49.5 % of the youth workforce was “unemployed or underemployed”. Osakwe says
she employed eight young people who earn 2.5 times the minimum wage. In Abuja,
the capital, government is carrying out a similar campaign to remove illegal
structures. Last week, it spray-painted 24hour demolition notices on several
businesses. Muna Okam, owner of Chloe’s Cupcake Heaven, wrote on Instagram:
“We’ve been in this building doing business for five years and you give us 24
hours notice at almost the close of business for demolition . . . how much more
are entrepreneurs supposed to take?” The idea that government is one of the
hurdles that ambitious young people must clear would no doubt be an affront to
Buhari’s administration, which convened a “demo day” to promote entrepreneurs
that coincided with the Zuckerberg visit. Entrepreneurs confronted with the
rubble of their demolished businesses will need more reassurance.
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