With attracting foreign direct investment certain to be one of the main challenges of the new year, I think President Tinubu should invite King Charles to Nigeria in 2024 bringing along a large entourage of British investors

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Nigeria was created by the British as their "African India." A large colony south of the Sahara that was expected to be the jewel in the crown of their African possessions. I believe they owe us big time

[2] As we all know, Britain is a country well renown for its expertise in several sectors including tunnelling, coal mining, shipmaking and steel making for instance. I am still scratching my head as to why Britaon has never brought a group of experts to help Nigeria in these industries?

[3] The man known as the world’s father of tunnelling was a British engineer named John Norton-Griffiths. During World War One, he was the man who came up with the idea of digging tunnels beneath the German trenches, allowing the allied powers to get behind their lines and subsequently win the war.

[4] After the war, Mr Norton-Griffith was awarded contracts to carry out major engineering projects in Africa and South America. These included work on the first 197km of the Benguela Railway in Angola between 1903 and 1908. His construction firm also took on a contract to carry out the heightening of Egypt’s Aswan Low Dam

[5] His pioneering work was what led to the construction of the London Underground. His methods are still being used to this very day as the UK expands the network to build the Crossrail sector of London Underground. Lagos in particular desperately needs such skills as a city of 12m simply cannot survive without an urban underground network

[6] In the area of coal mining too, Nigeria could benefit from British expertise. Just imagine what British coal miners could do if taken to Enugu

[7] Do you know that Sheffield was at one time renown as the European steel capital? Yet, we have Ajaokuta rotting away and our former colonial masters have not lifted a finger to revive the moribund facility

[8] Do you know that half of the world’s monarchs are in Nigeria? This is a terrible drain on the public purse. Malaysia had a similar situation to us at independence but they decided to merge their monarchies and have just six. They now rotate the King of Malaysia title among them. With us having three tiers of government, traditional monarchs are just figure heads. They do not serve any official function and you have to ask yourselves is their any justification for having more than say - The Alaafin of Oyo, the Sultan of Sokoto, the Shehu of Borno, the Obi of Onitsha, the Obong of Calabar and the Oba of Benin. I hope that when King Charles visits, he advises Nigeria to cut the number of monarchs on her books

[9] I think President Tinubu needs to read Britain the riot act and tell them that Nigeria expects a minimum of $100bn a year in foreign direct investment from her former colonial master. When you create a machine, you must be held responsible for it if it malfunctions

[10] Britain created Nigeria and left her sitting on a keg of gunpowder. As far as I am concerned, the British have to take responsibility for a lot of the problems they created. We have poverty, restlessness and violence in our land because of a lack of industrialisation and job creation