I am waiting to see which Nigerian industrialist will exploit the commercial opportunities Comfort Emmanson has shown exist in the global swimwear industry

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Unlike most Nigerians, I am no longer interested in the Ibom Air soap opera. We have been entertained and now it is time to tap into the commercial opportunities the incident threw up

[2] One just needs to see how Western multinationals cash in on events like Christmas, Easter, Valentines Day, Halloween, etc, to get my point

[3] Comfort Emmanson should now be the poster girl for the world’s top selling swimwear and bikini brand. By now, a Nigerian company should be using her image to sell millions of pieces of kit worldwide

[4] I guess this is what differentiates a developing economy from an industrial one. In somewhere like the UK, by now, Marks and Spencer would have got its suppliers to manufacture millions of samples of a specialised Comfort Emmanson swimwear and stacked its shelves with them

[5] Do you know that the global swimwear market was valued at $21.22bn in 2024 and is projected to be worth $22.04bn in 2025 and reach $30.59bn by 2032. It is unfortunate that Nigeria is not looking to use this opportunity to corner a share of this market

[6] Sadly, most of our industrialists who should be holding meetings on what to do to exploit the situation are yet to return from an ill-advised jaunt in Miami. With these kind of misplaced priorities, we are always going to be an under-developed nation

[7] Do Nigerians not see how Western product manufacturers are always quick to get the likes of Serena Williams, Simone Biles, Shelly-Anne Fraser-Price, Coco Gauf, etc to endorse their products?

[8] What Nigeria needs is multinationals like say Dangote Industries, Innoson Motors, NNPC, Man of God Plc, to get their clothing suppliers to manufacture say 1m units of a special summer swimwear named maybe the Ibom Comfort Kit. These companies should then be aggressively marketing it to all the holiday companies like Thomas Cook, TUI, Easyjet holidays, Jet2holidays, Lastminute.com, etc

[9] Comfort’s posters should be all over regular holiday resorts like Ibiza, Mallorca, Menorca, Faro, Malta, Crete, Lanzarote, etc. This new kit should be marketed as eco-friendly, comfortable, disposable and cheap and wonderfully suited to the warm summer weather

[10] Our problem as a people is intellectual laziness. We are content to remain eternal consumers so do not even see opportunities like this when they fall into our lap. Until this charges, we will remain a mono-economy dependent on crude oil for our survival

ayoakinfe@gmail.com