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A Billion Dollar Story

Image showing a billion dollars in cash stacked up neatly
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Nigerians are some of the most entrepreneurial folks on the planet, constantly braving the odds in a hostile environment to operate their businesses. Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are the real lifeblood of the Nigerian economy, powering over 80% of Nigeria’s workforce and contributing roughly 50% to the GDP. Understandably, it is a priority concern for administrations.

But between 2014 and 2018, over $1 billion was likely misappropriated through the mismanagement of MSME programs; an amount surpassing capital expenditure on health and education combined within that same period. Imagine the shattered dreams.

Hopefully, initiatives like the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) start-up facility for Africa will fare better and have a more lasting impact. Already launched in Nigeria, the timbuktoo initiative sponsored by the UNDP will harness $1 billion in public and private funds to catalyse business across Africa in the next ten years.

Playing their own part, enterprising Nigerian sesame seed farmers now supply 40% of Japan’s sesame seed consumption. Sesame seeds were 22.4% of total exports in 2021. Along with other agricultural products and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports to Japan and also machine and car imports to Nigeria, annual trade volume between the two countries now stands at $1 billion.

Nigeria’s economic mainstay for decades has however been crude oil and in just the first quarter of this year 2022 alone, $1 billion in revenue has been lost due to crude oil theft. Ogoniland in the Niger-Delta region - where much of the oil is extracted - remains polluted and squalid; an environmental cataclysm.    

Well over two decades after the exit of Shell Plc’s Nigeria operations from Ogoniland, oil from dormant infrastructure still sips into the land and water. So, following the 2019 flag off of a $1 billion Ogonilad clean-up, backed by Shell funding, it is indeed astonishing that UN Environmental Programme documents report that the region is now even worse off.  

But Nigerians are some of the most resilient folks on the planet; always finding ways to sustain their momentum in the face of sometimes harrowing conditions. In just the first half of the year 2022 - in spite of reduced disposable income and rising inflation - Nigerians have spent over $1 billion on alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.

 

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