Nations become richer not by fattening bank accounts but by accelerating the creation and utilization of capital. India’s (with the two major exchanges combined) now ranks as the 4th largest stock exchange in the world, at $4 trillion, behind only United States, China and Japan.
- India – $4 trillion
- South Africa – $950 billion
- Nigeria – $50 billion
How do you feel Nigeria?
Since the bulk of the global wealth is extracted from the capital market, it does mean that Nigeria can technically have at maximum 50 billionaires, assuming an average of $1 billion per b-club member. Think of the possibilities in India and South Africa.
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Do not remind me of the “billionaires” in Nnewi or Abeokuta. I do not believe those things just like I do not see Kano being a center of commerce, as the budget continues to drop to troubling level (now N350 billion when Lagos is hitting close to N2.3 trillion). By 2025, it is possible that a small state like Imo State can spend twice the budget of Kano State, and yet someone will shout “Kano is a big market”! How???
(Sure, Nigeria is rich on money, but not capital, as the economy remains largely informal)
We can all claim to be giants but when it comes to empirical data-anchored evidence, we fade. I call on the leaders of Nigeria to reform our economy, and make it capital-anchored, over money-anchored. Unfortunately for that to happen, our judiciary needs to do better because the temple of capital is an efficient legal system.
Nigeria does not have many altars for creating capital because the core temples are yet to be built. And that is where our National Assembly can serve the nation. I do like to quote these numbers to make some people uncomfortable because most times we think we’re good for the finals even though we’re not in the game during the group phases! Yes, we must play better to compete for the global economic trophies.
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There is too much noise in the land, and when numbers are not understood, the notion that we are doing great continues to take hold. The economy is poor, people cannot pay for true value of many basic things they need, so everything is faked, including leadership.
The most depressing part is that people you are asking to fix things are incapable of fixing anything, it’s not about what each individual thinks or the sentiments some hold, it’s self-evident that there’s no clarity on how to move from point A to B, and how long it will take.
When you are servicing your supposed big economy with sub $35 billion and big states are servicing with under $1 billion, what exactly can you build or advance with that? It’s modeled like buying and selling, where you list what you are going to buy based on how much is in your pocket.
We can’t rewrite the constitution, we can’t simplify our laws and make their enforcement effective. We yammer everyday that ‘corruption’ is the problem, not minding the damage and bigger disaster from poor thinking, or is corruption the cause of poor judgment also? When you don’t know how to understand your problems, everything becomes your problem.
Let’s keep overrating ourselves here.