Nigeria's next president must write to the world's top 100 blue chip companies and investors making it crystal clear - Awalokan for investment

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Investment tends to be cyclical as blue chip companies will pick on an economy and then just invest in it heavily. Because money follows money, once the first dozen or so companies invest heavily in a company, everyone joins in as the herd mentality takes over

[2] If one looks back over the last 30 or so years, economies like Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia, China, United Arab Emirates, and India have all benefited immensely from this investment surge by blue chip companies. As things stand, the rest of the world is accelerating ahead and leaving Africa behind. It is up to the United Nations to address this anomaly. We need an article passed by the UN Security Council compelling all industrialised nations to invest 5% of their gross domestic product (GDP) in Africa. Failure to do so should be classified as a crime against humanity. Failing to eradicate poverty is a worse crime than using chemical weapons in my opinion

[3] In the case of China, the surge was simply breathtaking. In cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai, about a dozen skyscrapers were being built daily as the world's blue chip companies all scrambled to get a piece of the Chinese economic miracle

[4] Just to give you an example of what was going on, Beijing recently built the Daxing airport that spans 1m square metres, costs £13.5bn and was constructed south of Beijing in just five years. Shaped like a starfish, the new Daxing International Airport has been designed to handle up to 72m passengers a year

[5] Just so you know that this is indeed something else, a new high-speed railway service has been constructed to serve the airport. It will carry passengers at a speed of 250kmh (155mph) to the centre of Beijing 45 miles away. Then, US aerospace start-up Hermeus Corporation, said it has obtained finance from seed-funders and private investors to develop a plane that will travel at five times the speed of sound, transporting passengers between New York and London in 90 minutes or less. It will no doubt be flying into this Beijing airport

[6] I want to ask all of you how come Africa as a continent with 55 countries has a gross domestic product (GDP) of $2.19trn, while China has a GDP of $12.24trn. They both have identical populations of about 1.3bn people. Unfortunately, the United Nations (UN) does not see anything immoral about this. The European Union has a GDP of $18.8trn and a population of about 500,000m people. What kind of macabre inequality is this?

[7] Now with the coronavirus pandemic, a lot of companies have decided to stop planting all their eggs in one basket and are spreading their investments out of China. Among the countries that are benefiting immensely from this are India, Malaysia, South Korea and Vietnam

[8] What is happening in India in particular is scary as industrial parks are opening everywhere on a daily basis. They are even building new industrial cities from scratch just to accommodate these blue chip companies

[9] Do you know that India is now aiming for annual double digit GDP growth for the next 10 years. I say, we should stop sitting on the sidelines and watching like mumus. We must tell the rest of the world, Awalokan. We want a piece of the action too. Nigeria accounts for 2.5% of the world's population. We want 2.5% of all global investment too

[10] When I look at the thousands of Nigerians who shamelessly troop to Dubai annually to throw flamboyant and expensive parties, I ask myself how come they are not embarrassed about the fact that their nation is not part of this development drive. How come the “See wetin your mate dey do” argument does not apply here? If all the money Nigerians invest in Dubai jamborees was invested in Nigeria, it would have had a significant impact on the economy by now. My people, we should make Awalokan our national slogan from today onwards, just as the South Koreans have theirs which says: "Anything we don;t produce we don;t need."