Buhari should use his Japanese visit as an opportunity to resolve the Ajaokuta debacle once and for all

By Ayo Akinfe 

(1) President Muhammadu Buhari has arrived in Japan for the seventh Tokyo International Conference on African Development holding in Yokohama. Basically, the summit is about Japanese investors exploring investment opportunities in Africa. There is zero justification for the Nigerian president attending if he cannot return with at least one investment deal

(2) Nigeria is not Togo, Liberia, Malawi, Eritrea, Lesotho, Chad, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Zambia or Central African Republic looking for a token Japanese presence in their countries. We are Africa’s largest market, biggest economy and a nation on the verge of industrialisation. We need massive Japanese investment in our manufacturing sector and President Buhari should not leave Yokohama until he gets it. If the Japanese do not meet our demands, we should pull out of such summits in the future 

(3) Japan is renown for its automobile manufacturing and Nigeria is one of their biggest customers worldwide. Companies like Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Suzuki, Honda, Lexus, etc sell more cars in Nigeria than they do in the rest of Africa combined. They have so cornered our market that even Nigerian diasporans purchase their vehicles in the millions. It is payback time our Nippon friends! 

(4) It is totally unacceptable that none of these companies has one manufacturing facility in Nigeria. None of them even has an assembly plant, which for me is blatant colonialism, racism, colonialism and exploitation. They cannot use the environment as an excuse because Volkswagen and Peugeot have both opened assembly plants in Nigeria despite making less money from us 

(5) We are basically the dumping ground for second hand Japanese cars. They open plants elsewhere but have no plans to invest in Nigeria. President Buhari should be reading the riot act to them in Yokohama. He should be giving the Japanese an ultimatum - By 2021, open facilities in Nigeria or get the hell out of our market. If they do not comply, the government should launch a Buy Japanese Last campaign 

(6) To manufacture cars you need steel. Nigeria has several steel plants, especially Ajaokuta and Aladja but neither is working to full capacity. President Buhari should offer the Japanese automobile manufacturers the Ajaokuta plant as a venture they can purchase to produce steel products for their Nigerian operations. There is nothing stopping Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Lexus, Mitsubishi, Honda and Suzuki from floating a steel holding company to purchase Ajaokuta and Aladja and get the plants to manufacture steel rods and plates to furnish their Nigerian factories 

(7) Just to explain how this works, Kellogg’s part-owns a maize processing plant in Liverpool that supplies processed produce to its corn flake factories. As a stakeholder, Kellogg’s has a vested interest in ensuring that the plant succeeds. We should be demanding something similar from the Japanese car manufacturers 

(8) Before some of you start talking about power supply, roads, railway freight lines, bla, bla, bla, can I just point out that responsible investors who are in it for the long term always invest in such projects. Nothing, I repeat nothing, stops these companies investing in a mini hydro electric power plant at say Idah, Jebba, Lokoja or Onitsha on the River Niger that can generate say 1,000MW to power their factories 

(9) If I was on President Buhari’s entourage to Yokohama, I would have challenged the Japanese with their investment in Manchuria between 1931 and 1945. Do you know that in the run-up to World War Two, Japan invaded China and invested billions in Manchuria. By 1935, Japan was producing 15m tonnes of coal, 10% of its cement, 450,000 tonnes of steel, 500,000 spindles and 25,000 tonnes of cotton fabrics in Manchuria. They also invested in power plants on the Sungari and Yalu rivers. During the early years of Japanese control, Manchuria accounted for 14.3% of total industrial production in China, including 12% of its industrial work force. We demand similar investment in Nigeria as a right. We have served as a cash cow for Japan for long enough 

(10) Our demands should be simple. We want the Japanese automobile industry to:
(i) Form a joint venture to purchase our steel mills and get them functioning at full capacity 
(ii) Insist that each of these companies opens one assembly plant in Nigeria
(iii) Demand that each of them have a manufacturing facility that makes at least one of their car components in Nigeria 
(iv) Insist that these companies form an autoville industrial estate that creates something like 100,000 jobs 
(v) Demand that they invest in power supply, roads, railway links to the coast etc at this Autoville as they did in Manchuria