A FOREIGNER GUIDE TO SHOPPING IN NIGERIA

So you survived. You decided to stay at least for a while. You are renting a house with a generator and you take your anti-malaria pills regularly. Sometimes on a night out you want to enjoy the breeze and you wear shorts so your carry your insect repellent spray that makes you smell like agro-chemicals. But you will stay in Nigeria. God will bless you.

But there is a problem. You have been going to the big mall with bright lights and straight colorful aisles complete with signs and directions. What is the use of leaving malls in your country with all the processed food and come here to the same thing? After all, this is Africa where everything is as God made it abi? So you need to conquer your fear of savage Africans, kidnappers, suicide bombers, and those guys killing each other in the name of foreign religions- all those things they wrote in your travel advisory. It’s time to fold your sleeves and enter the market. But wait! Not without these tips.

You might want get rid of that ugly, wide brimmed hat and dark sunglasses. It makes you look like a tourist with plenty of foreign currency. Consequently you will pay 5 times the amount for anything you buy. Be wise. You will not lose your skin. Use a little sunscreen if you have to. You are already white; don’t attract more attention to yourself. You might want to avoid open shoes- not many markets have their paths paved with concrete.

If you don’t like being touched or heckled, then you will need to get used to it very quickly. Your arms will be held, your shirt pulled, you will be dragged. If you are white, (or even almost white), you will be called ‘Oyibo’ in the market and whistled at. Don’t go feeling like a celebrity with paparazzi all around and lose yourself. They don’t love you. It’s your money they want- they do it to us too. Just keep moving until you find the item that you are looking for.

Someone will follow you and ask you what you are looking for. Ignore him. You need to find your own way. You may get lost but all will be well. Learning a few words of pidgin might help and even if they laugh at your pronunciation, it will give you leverage for your bargaining.

Now, you have found the item you want. Don’t try to be too friendly or smile. Don’t take his friendliness for niceness. He is not nice. There are no exceptions. You ask, ‘How much’. (It might help to ask for the market price of the item you want to buy from your driver or security guard before going to the market). He will look at you and without any fear or shame mention an amount that should give you a heart attack. The temptation will be strong but No, don’t do it- don’t do a mental conversion to dollars or pounds or whatever superior currency your country has. That would just mess things up in your head.

Whatever price he tells you, divide by 4 if it is an item of clothing, electronics (or if the man is Igbo). Divide by two if it is a food item (or if the man is Hausa). Now the mentality of the Hausa Muslim trader is quite different from that of the Igbo trader. If the market is in the north especially, the Hausa Muslim trader is likely to come close to the actual market price after one or two tries accompanied by a plea in the name of God. (This is changing with a few Hausa traders who live and trade in the South. So in the South treat them all the same.)

Don’t be afraid to call a low price. Never buy at the first or second store except it is a food item and you like what you see. Leave the store if you don’t get the bargain you want and try as many stores as you have the time for. After three or four stores, you will begin to have a fair idea of the real market price.

Sometimes you will ask for an item that the store owner doesn’t have. If he has to leave his store to get it, ask him not to bother. The idea is simple: he will get it from another store and usually add his own little profit to the market price. You have legs, walk out yourself and look for it.

Even if you have struck a bargain, do not be afraid to abandon it if at any time before you pay for it you have a feeling the price isn’t right. If it doesn’t feel right, it usually isn’t right. Don’t be fooled by words like, ‘this is the last price’, ‘even I didn’t get it at that price’, ‘you can’t get it anywhere for that amount’ or my personal favorite ‘I am giving you this price because it is you’-as if the bugger ever knew you before!

You will be sweaty, your shoes might get muddy, your shirt and hands will have the finger prints of scores of traders, you will nearly lose your voice haggling, but it will be rewarding. At home you will lay out the items you have bought and cherish them, knowing how much work it took to get them at the right price. As you step into the shower to wash off that sweat and dirt, you will feel a sense of fulfillment that no mall with artificial lights can give you, a sense of achievement. You will say to yourself, thank God I came to this wonderful country.

ENCOUNTER

She saw him across the room

White shirt as always

He hadn’t changed

As their eyes met

She saw questions form like cornrows

In his eyes

And one by one she wanted to plant the answers:

"Yes I have put on weight

"No I do not use the perfume you sent me

"Yes this is my third Margarita and I have room for more

"I have started smoking again

"I let my hair down, I did the ponytail only because you asked

"Yes I took off my braces, I don’t care anymore

"No, I no longer shave down there, I hate the ingrown hairs

"Yes I have had sex since you left

"Yes it was you who left

"Yes the sex is better

"No, I do not wake up at night thinking of you..."

She wanted to blurt out all the answers

Instead she just said ‘hi’

And turned away.

BUHARI, THE MANY NORTH'S AND JUSTICE

I have read many articles, intelligent and painfully ignorant, about the current crises, which any Northerner or perceptive observer could have predicted. I am neither shocked nor confounded by the riots and the killings.

I choose to ignore the ignorant comments especially from people who live on the other side of the Niger behind computers and blackberry’s who have no clue about the complexity of this ‘North’.

This crises is a bit different in my estimation from the other mindless religious conflicts that have visited the north. For the first time in the North(especially the Muslim North), I heard young uneducated men expressing hope that for once there is a worthy man on the ballot; that at last their time has come. For the first time, there was actual trust in a person to whom they bequeathed all their dreams. This man was General Buhari. Anyone who speaks Hausa and knows the Hausa speaking people will know the importance of the concept of ‘amana’. Trust. It is the one thing that is cherished above most things in the Muslim North. It is not uncommon for you to meet a Hausa petty trader to give you goods without money or collateral, regardless of whether he knows you or not. In fact I still remember how my mother at the market in U/Rimi in the North of Kaduna city, would stop a Hausa motorcyclist (she always insisted on a Hausa man) whom she had never met, give him her shopping sometimes worth thousands and describe her house to him. She would pay him and not fret about the things reaching home. My mother always only bought meat from Hausa Muslims because she trusted that it would be fresh and that it was not a dead animal. In Hausa communities, shops would be left open when people went to say their prayers. Amana. Trust.

This is the trust that has been squandered by Northern leaders, notably in the past 12 years-members of the PDP led ruling class, and before that, military and traditional leaders. These Northern leaders have destroyed every level of trust given to them without questioning by their people. One man seemed to rise above all the filth, above all the distrust. They noticed his lifestyle. They didn’t see flashy cars in his drive way. They didn’t see his kids drive around town recklessly with loud music spending plenty money on their pre pubescent girlfriends. They didn’t hear scandals of massive overseas accounts. They met him at petrol stations. They saw an honest, straightforward, religious man. So when they went to the streets, they went first after their own leaders who had squandered this trust and those who they perceive had abetted them. Sadly, as with all mob actions, it provided the perfect cover for criminals, miscreants and those with sinister agendas (and there are plenty in this North- politicians, thieves and fundamentalists). So eventually, churches were burnt and innocent people killed.

However, the man is a Muslim and unapologetically so. He has not been afraid to express his ‘Muslimness’ in public. This alone is enough to constitute a problem in the North. For we are not one North. We are many North’s. There is the Muslim North. The uneducated rural North. The aristocratic North. The cosmopolitan North. The Christian North... each with its own interests and sometimes as different from each other as people from different countries. The marginalisation of minority groups in the North has also hurt Buhari who is seen as the face of the oppressor by at least some in the Christian minority. The countless religious crises have divided the North and created mutual suspicion, further highlighting the fact that the idea of a single united North is a myth. Some have suggested that Sardauna created one North and that we only recently created divisions. This is far from the truth. The facade which was One North was in fact a mix of dominant and dominated people, peace existing only because the quiet grievances of minorities like non Muslims had not concretised into vocal movements for the exercise of rights. The Jos crisis is a classic example of the manifestation of decades of frustration among the minorities. That manifestation though reactionary is more than a knee jerk reaction. It is minorities paranoid about the increasing dominance of the majority and taking rash actions to hold onto power, land and resources in a region where the dominant sentiment among minorities is that if you are not Hausa Fulani or Muslim, you will be marginalised.

The decades of injustice meted out on Nigerians by their leaders have made eventual violent reaction inevitable. The many poisonous variables in our polity which have been allowed to interact under the lazy watch of Nigeria’s thieving political class have fixed themselves firmly in our polity. What we are now dealing with are just the early warning signs of a cancer that is malignant. Our mutual suspicions make us easy to exploit and set against each other, so that while we are fighting over whose god is bigger, our government loots the commonwealth. Where there is no justice there cannot be peace. An aggrieved man is many times an irrational man. It is wrong to always judge a reaction, which is unplanned, when you do not judge first, the action, which is planned. A reaction is many times worse than an action, for it is delivered without a sense of proportion, only a sense of wanting release. There is usually more passion in a reaction. He who sets a ball rolling should prepare to follow it wherever it rolls to.

This government has a choice. To move beyond its rigged landslide victory and actually give its citizens a semblance of justice. To move from the hawks that now have it by the scrotum, namely PDP party investors, and work for its citizens- give them roads, electricity and rule of law. To provide infrastructure and stop the massive looting of government resources that is now going on. Or. To oversee the early days of the disintegration of a Nigerian state that has miraculously held on for the past 50 years.

THE CORPORATE AFFAIRS COMMISSION- A CASE STUDY OF INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE IN NIGERIA. (1)

The chart at the bottom shows Nigeria's ranking (WORLD BANK GROUP) in ease of doing business. Nigeria is 137 out of 183. It means that we rank among the most difficult countries to do business in.

I am concerned about starting a business which, as far as legal and administrative processes go, begins at the Corporate Affairs commission (CAC). The CAC is a torturous hell-hole and a reminder of why we are called a third world country. To get a name approved for a company or business name takes these days anywhere from three days to two weeks. The premises of the CAC and the air would make you forget that all the hundreds of well dressed men and women running from pillar to post are actually trained professional- advocates and solicitors. Inefficiency, 'system failures', disorganization all account for the length of time it takes to start a basic business entity in Nigeria.

The above is no breaking news. In fact each time I complain, I am told by mycolleagues (quite unfortunately) to just get used to it and move on. However, there has been recently the movement of the stamp duties section, without which a company cannot be registered, to a different part of town in Abuja. This means that as a lawyer incorporating a company in Abuja, you will have to go from one part of town to another over a period of between two weeks and one month to get a simple company registered.

My opinion is simply that you should not need a lawyer to get a basic business unit registered. Most processes at the CAC are still done manually and the many computers in the building are as worthless to the computerisation of the process as external hard drives to a man seeking internet connection. People should be able to buy a scratch card, search online for the availability of their proposed name, and register it online with the same scratch card, without having to leave their homes. This is doable, afterall, people register for O'level examinations in Nigeria online- a far more complex process than the registration of a basic business entity.

Lawyers have no business standing in queues and struggling for sheets of paper like touts at the CAC. I am sad each time I go there and observe just how cheap and unprofessional it makes us look.

Nigeria is not a serious country, yet. Perhaps someday.

Elnathan.

Ps. The table below shows where we are today from a survey of 183 countries around the world. Things are getting worse every year.

REGION	Sub-Saharan Africa
INCOME CATEGORY	Lower middle income
POPULATION	154,728,892
GNI PER CAPITA (US$)	1,140.00

DOING BUSINESS 2011 RANK	DOING BUSINESS 2010 RANK	CHANGE IN RANK
137	134	-3

TOPIC RANKINGS	DB 2011 Rank	DB 2010 Rank	Change in Rank
Starting a Business	110	109	-1
Dealing with Construction Permits	167	165	-2
Registering Property	179	178	-1
Getting Credit	89	87	-2
Protecting Investors	59	57	-2
Paying Taxes	134	131	-3
Trading Across Borders	146	146	No change
Enforcing Contracts	97	97	No change
Closing a Business	99	95	-4

Source: http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/nigeria