22 facts about Nigeria that can help Ukrainians open business there

Last year the Ministry of Economy and Trade made public the Export Strategy of Ukraine. It names 20 top-priority countries for us and the EU. Among them is Nigeria, the only state from Sub-Saharan Africa. An official business delegation of Ukraine with deputy ministers of the economy and the agro-industrial complex at the head is going to visit that country in early April.

Nigeria is too big a country for a newspaper article to spotlight all the sides and complexities of its life. Some facts about that interesting and promising country may be of interest to readers and to those who wish to implement their business plans there.

1. Nigeria is 1.5 times larger than Ukraine in terms of territory and more than 5 times in terms of population. Unofficially (there has been no census for a long time), there are more than 220 million people living there. The UN estimates that there will be 450 million by 2050 – third place after China and India. The median age of the population is 18.5 years.

There are about 400 ethnicities and tribes in the country, more than 500 languages and dialects, with English having the official status. These ethnicities roughly make up three big groups.

In the north, it is the Hausa (almost 50 percent of the population). Twelve states officially recognize Sharia Law.

The south-east is populated by the Roman Catholic Ibo (or Igbo). It is the largest oil-producing area.

The south-west is the Yoruba, also Roman Catholics. Lagos, the former capital of Nigeria with a population of over 20 million, is located here. Lagos is today sort of a commercial hub of West Africa. Ships from all over the world arrive here, and the cargo is reloaded onto tractor-trailers which carry it to various countries.

On the whole, Muslims and Catholics are tolerant towards each other. There happen excesses, of course. There is an informal agreement between the elites that the presidency should alternate between a Muslim and a Christian. The current president, General Muhammadu Buhari, is a Muslim from the northern state of Kaduna.

2. Nigeria is a federal country, consisting of 36 states. The chief executive at the state level is the governor elected by popular vote for a 4-year term. Subordinated to him is the state government consisting of relevant ministries. The states have budgets of their own. While the federal government is responsible for defense, foreign policy, the oil and gas sector, and national projects, such as railways, nuclear energy, and space exploration, state governments tackle all the other problems. Once a year, governors gather in Kaduna to play polo at the country’s only stadium for this game and, at the same time, to share experience in the solution of local problems.

3. There are similar moments in the history of Nigeria and Ukraine. Nigeria gained independence on October 1, 1960. As soon as May 1967, the eastern region declared independence as a state called the Republic of Biafra. They reasoned as follows: we are a rich region and we have oil, so why should we feed the poor agrarian north? Let’s secede and live prosperously. On the same day, the federal president imposed a state of emergency. It took a month to get prepared, and a civil war broke out in early July. In two years, it claimed an estimated 2 million human, mostly civilian, lives, but territorial integrity of the country was restored.

Today, the country’s north-east is suffering from the militant Islamist organization Boko Haram. The army managed to neutralize their strongholds in Nigeria, but it is incapable of preventing suicide bombers from killing hundreds of people. We hear tragic news from these regions time and again. About 2 million refugees, kidnappings, more than a half of schools in the state of Borno are closed, more than 3,000 teachers were killed, the populace cannot take care of their households, starvation is rife – a familiar picture, isn’t it? On March 1, 2018, the army was ordered to guard all schools in the three states.

4. Oil and gas are Nigeria’s main wealth and, at the same time, nemesis. Nigeria has the 7th largest reserves of oil in the world, which should suffice for another 15 years or so. Oil production accounted for up to 90 percent of hard-currency revenues. Petrodollars were enough to meet all needs, including the enrichment of people close to governmental circles. You did not have to rack your brains over the development of other industries. But the price of oil plummeted to an all-time low a few years ago. When you are short of money, this opens your eyes to many things. The government had to recall that the agrarian sector was neglected, there were no roads, and there was an acute shortage of electricity – its production met a mere 40 percent of the country’s needs, with the remaining 60 percent being made up by means of diesel generators.

5. Nigeria is really a country of diesel generators. Paradoxically, the oil-rich country has to import almost all the fuel it needs (including for diesel generators). Three small refineries work at a 40 percent capacity and have no essential effect on this market. People have to elementarily steal oil from pipelines and process it as fuel at home – often risking their life. More than a hundred people were burnt alive recently during this “procedure” by an accidental spark. Damaging pipelines has become business of sorts: they damage one today and make a deal with a company to repair it tomorrow. This “business” especially affects Shell. This American company was even forced to sell some of its assets. Nigerian Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, is going to solve this problem. He has invested his own 5 billion dollars in the construction of the largest refinery in Africa, although his main business is cement production. He has factories all over Africa. Incidentally, he started his business by borrowing 3,000 dollars from his uncle to buy sugar and sold it at market prices. He is not an oligarch – he does not have a political party, TV channels, or newspapers.

6. It will be logical and fair to say after this that Nigeria is also a country of corruption. This is another factor that brings us closer. Here are two fresh examples. Earlier this year Nigeria finally purchased 12 US warplanes at a price of 50 million dollars each. Bolivia bought the same planes for 10 million dollars each. See the difference? It is interesting to follow up this story. The second: in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, a man reported to the police that he had not seen his neighbors for several months. Obeying the law, the police broke down the door and entered the apartment, only to find bales (!) of dollars, pounds, euros, and yens worth a total 123 million pounds. The owner was not identified. And it is not an isolated case – also a familiar picture for us. The difference is that owners do not hide in our country.

The current President of Nigeria, General Muhammadu Buhari, is known as a corruption-buster. Back in his first presidential term, he did not confine himself to words and began to put the best-known corruptionists behind bars, for which he was overthrown. He arrested 55 generals at the very beginning of his term.

7. But there is also another Nigeria which lives and develops. Without laying claim to a thorough analysis of the state of affairs, it is still worthwhile to fragmentarily present some facts in order to have unbiased information about that country.

8. Nigeria has become Africa’s premier state in terms of GDP, leaving behind South Africa. In 2001-12, the average GDP growth rate was 9 percent. It has slowed down now due to oil price fall. Add to this a 40-percent devaluation of the naira. Nigeria is now slowly coming out of recession.

9. There are 40 million of those in the country who belong to the middle class. It will number an estimated 60 million in 5 years’ time.

10. There are 645 millionaires (officially!), 520 of them staying in Lagos, and 20 billionaires in Nigeria. The second-richest African, Folorunsho Alakija (beauty parlors, oil, 1,600 million dollars) spent 280,000 euros on one million roses for the marriage of her son with an Iranian model.

11. The National Space Agency functions actively. They plan to launch the first astronaut by 2030. A nuclear power station is being built with Russian assistance. The Ministry of Defense is trying to launch the production of drones.

12. The Nigerian film industry – Nollywood – is the world’s second largest producer of motion pictures. The average cost is 15 million dollars. With an average production of 50 movies per week and about $590 million revenue annually, Nigeria’s film market is booming.

13. Nigeria took part for the first time in the South Korea Winter Olympics with two bobsledders.

14. There is a $6-billion-worth business center on the artificial island near Lagos. The main investor is billionaire Gilbert Chagoury.

15. After the visit of the king of Morocco to Abuja in December 2016, it was decided to resume discussing the construction of a trans-Saharan gas pipeline between Port Harcourt, Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Senegal, and later to Spain through Gibraltar.

16. China is actively building a network of railways. The first of them, 186-km-long, links the president’s native city of Kaduna and the capital. The next are being built along the Guinean coast at the cost of 12 billion dollars. In the west it branches off as the Lagos-Kano line to the north, and in the east – as the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri line also to the north.

17. The average wage throughout the country is 200 dollars, and 400 dollars in cities.

18. A Nigerian writer, Wole Soyinka, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986.

19. The favorite beverage is beer. The consumption of it is annually growing by 9 percent. The main producer is Heineken.

20. China and India are competing for a place on the Nigerian market, with the goods turnover being 18 billion dollars and 17 billion dollars, respectively. Incidentally, President Buhari graduated from a military college in India. About a million Indians work in the country.

21. Out of Africa’s 100 most influential people, 21 are from Nigeria.

22. Ukraine’s place on this promising market is quite modest – 0.11 percent of Nigeria’s total commodity turnover. In better times, our turnover was about 300 million dollars, but it has been maintained at the level of 100 million in the past few years. Nigeria is closely watching these processes, and it is no accident that the question of closing the embassy of Nigeria (one of the three embassies of Sub-Saharan countries) in Ukraine was raised in 2016. Our side had to make a strenuous effort for the embassy to remain behind. We hope that the business delegation will change the situation for the better, although its status is insufficient for such hopes to come true.

Meanwhile, there is a basis for serious economic cooperation. There are thousands, if not dozens of thousands, of Ukrainian university and college graduates working in Nigeria. Unfortunately, nobody has ever taken them into account or paid attention to them. Dr. Olumuyiwa B. Aliu, a National Aviation University graduate, is doing a second term as President of the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a highly efficient organization that caters for all the world’s aviation companies. He is married to a Kyivite. A graduate of Kharkiv University, also married to a Ukrainian woman, headed the National Space Agency. A graduate of Kyiv National University’s Institute of International Relations was the speaker of Nigeria’s senate.

The Nigerian diaspora in Ukraine, including families, numbers almost 30,000 people today.

Ruslan Harbar is director of the Center for African Studies