I hope President Buhari is despatching a team to London tomorrow with a robust foreign direct investment list for new prime minister Liz Truss

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Britain's elite still regards Nigeria as a colony  of savages in some far away jungle where people have just climbed down from tree tops. It is time to change that narrative by getting the former colonial master to invest in the nation they created 

[2] Trust our Nigerian government not to have any strategy either. At the moment, Nigeria is the UK’s fastest growing export market but from what O can see, President Buhari has no plans to boost trade and commerce between both countries? Neither does he appear to have foreign direct investment (FDI) investment targets for British investors in Nigeria

[3] According to Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID) UK-Nigeria trade was worth £3.4bn in 2016. Nigeria should have had a wish list demanding that this be boosted to around £50bn by now. There are sectors like power, automobiles, railways, healthcare, etc where Britain has a lot of expertise that is badly needed in Nigeria

[4] Britain has one of the world’s largest wind farms in the North Sea. Why is the British government not pushing its investors to establish a similar project along Nigeria’s Atlantic coastline? President Buhari should have asked Downing Street to offer tax holidays and breaks to any British company that invests in the sector. I want to see an endless wall of wind turbines stretching for 800km from Badagry to Calabar

[5] Britain once used to have a thriving car manufacturing industry. Nigeria on the other hand desperately needs to start manufacturing automobiles at home to meet growing demand. Why have the two governments not discussed the locating of British car plants in Nigeria? Just imagine if we had Vauxhall and Leyland manufacturing facilities in Lagos and Abuja employing say 10,000 people and churning out vehicles for the local market

[6] One of the reasons why the British automobile industry collapsed is because she did not expand it into her former colonies. In contrast, the likes of Volkswagen, Peugeot, Toyota, Nissan, etc moved into markets like Nigeria big time. We need an Anglo-Nigeria plan to work on the automobile industry in my opinion. For me, it should be centred around electric cars, with the world’s largest factory in Nigeria

[7] Britain also owes Nigeria one big time when it comes to railways. They committed a crime against humanity when they built a narrow gauge track in Nigeria during the colonial era. Narrow gauge tracks are for intra-city trams or factory supply freight trains. Building a narrow gauge track from Lagos to Kano that runs at about 40km an hour is economic madness. They should be asked to compensate us for this by investment in the Nigerian railway sector

[8] Given the large number of Nigerians in the UK, it is increasingly becoming an important market for our food. As we speak, yam, egusi, gari, etc are widely available in UK supermarkets. President Buhari should have got Prime Minister Johnson to sign a trade deal guaranteeing Nigerian produce shelf space in every British retail outlet. It is time to put this proposal to Liz Truss 

[9] We have been talking about a national carrier for ages but alas, very little has been done about it. President Buhari should have asked our former colonial masters to pledge that BA will take a 30% stake in Nigeria Air. They owe us one big time here as Britain left Nigeria with no airline. Also, Lagos to London is one of the most lucrative routes in the world and British airlines like Virgin and BA have made a fortune from it

[10] In 1851 when Lagos became a crown colony, Britain was the world’s leading maritime power and they should have built at least two shipyards along the Nigerian coast. In 1851 they should have built one in Lagos and then one should have opened in Calabar when it became the capital of the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria in 1906. Not one canoe or propeller was even built in Nigeria, which for me is totally unacceptable. That is racism at its worst. What they were effectively saying is we were ignorant primates not worthy of sharing technology with. Liz Truss should be made to correct this anomaly