He might not have become a billionaire. Having inherited one million dollars from his rich father, he might not have been wise enough to invest it in building companies.
What with many uncensored get-rich schemes in this country as alternative to investment. He might have sank the money into one of such schemes and go to have forty winks expecting billions.
He might not have had an apple-pie order plan for business.
Here is the paradox: most investors can’t explain the schemes professionally even when they are not lay-persons. In Nigeria, even the so-called educated believe in “something for nothing” and we’re never tired from loving premature ecstasy.
The Nigerian hankers to make money without providing service.
In the business arena, Trump might have struggled and voted with his feet out of business. Nigeria lags behind Sub-Saharan Africa in electricity, and other infrastructure such as motorable roads. Once an agricultural exporter, our lands are now desolate without cultivation, the population of people living in poverty is over 70 percent. Labour production has declined, and industry capacity utilisation is extremely low.
We do not invest massively in education, industry and increase domestic savings to over 25 percent of GDP. Where is the power to run a 24 hour economy? Most businesses shut down operation at 8pm. How many people do two jobs here: one during the day and the other at night? How would he have become a billionaire? This might be possible through the running of government contract. We do not create jobs neither do we transfer technology.
The rules of business are so hard here. Does it benefit the country if you are told you can only do business with a multinational organisation when you can show evidence of tax clearance for three years, provide a local content certificate, etc.
Even when you haven’t done any business with your company name to generate money for all of these registrations, failure of which these companies wouldn’t give a start-up in any business. When you submit an inquiry to the regulatory authority, you would be told that you need to have six staff on your payroll to get a certificate and to pay backlog of fees for the number of years of incorporation of company. Even when you are yet to win a contract and do not have that number of staff.
But the multinational companies wouldn’t give you jobs without all of these papers in place even with a duly incorporated company. Many people miss business opportunities because of convoluted rules like this. Does a sensible government tax the unemployed? Doesn’t business thrive in an economy that is highly diversified? See! Trump’s “art of the deal” doesn’t work here.
The banks would have negotiated him out of the deal. Which bank would have trusted and given him the massive loans for his real estate business with no down payment and life-saving collateral other than his ideas? On the political scene, Trump wouldn’t have been able to fight the establishment in Nigeria. You should know this, but we do not have a healthy culture of tolerance here. Our frontal-lobe responds to primal emotions quickly.
Many times people billy-club and use their fist to settle accounts. Some juggernaut would have unearthed the audio of him boasting about groping women with rider in the press shouting,”there goes Trump the libertine” long before he became a presumptive nominee and not before.
His tax records would have come to light revealed by moles in his team before and not near elections. Some folks would have sent him a threatening text (even to life), to withdraw his candidacy the same way someone I know was sent such a text for only wanting to contest a local council election.
If Trump was a Nigerian, he would never have been president especially since we romance appealing symbols and our level of evolution is one where we still love our kind and subjugate others who aren’t our kind.
His emergence would have pitted us north versus south and will determine if some people will bomb oil pipelines, call for cessation or if there will be radical religious fundamentalism with fervor.
The level of blackmail would have forced Trump to withdraw from the presidential race after a press statement have him invalided politically.
But Trump would have fared better as a Nigerian politician, thanks to oil which has made us lazy and the bankruptcy of our values and politics without issues.
In an era where political parties do not groom candidates for elective office anymore, where anybody can happen along onto the political scene,”to be” even a demagogue. We are at the level where we are today, no thanks to demagogues on peacock thrones everywhere. They don’t know that,”to be rich is not what you have in your bank account, but what you have in your heart.”
And civilisation only comes about where there is the elevation of people’s interest over the interest of a few selfish ones who put money before people.
Mr. Simon Abah, a political analyst, wrote from Port Harcourt, Rivers State Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
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