Where are the real stories not linked to shoddy or non-execution of government contracts, manipulation of government regulation for profit and personal advantage? Where are the successes not linked to misapplication of waivers, abuse of provisions for tax holiday, dodgy payment of customs duties, outright stealing of shareholder funds mopped up cheaply from the capital market?
“Every social need is a business opportunity” – Robert Neuwirth
In the last eighteen months of publishing a magazine devoted to the promotion of entrepreneurship and innovation in Africa, one of our main challenges in Nigeria has been getting our prominent entrepreneurs to share their stories. We are interested in the everyday story of people turning nothing into something. We are keen on stories of ingenuity and innovation. We want to share in the challenges of the process, and celebrate endurance and the dogged determination it takes to making success of a vision, but it does appear that not too many of our prominent ‘successes’ are interested in a full disclosure, at least, to us.
We might not know why that is largely the case, but it helps us with a bit of understanding on why there are only a handful of biographies of our prominent entrepreneurs out there. Can it be connected with the opacity in which many of our businesses are rooted and operate in? Is it a case of a bit of murkiness in the storylines that some might not want revealed? Whatever is the case, is it not strange that we are not telling our stories with the same gusto we show off other aspects of our life, or as we see elsewhere? Why are we not writing books on our enterprises to document for now and thereafter the toil and back-breaking sweat that birthed the great names and businesses that dot our skyline?
Or is it that we do not have stories to tell? Where are Nigeria’s stories of past disruptions or don’t we have? Where are the stories of enterprise built on the backs of creativity and ingenuity without cutting corners in the payment of taxes and duties? Where are the businesses built without short-changing government and the people of Nigeria through dodgy execution of contracts? Do we not have insights we can share with those behind? Would we not help to validate the dreams and vision of those behind if we will be bold enough to share? Where are the stories?
How do we change the narrative away from the false and the negative if we do not share the stories of yesterday? How do we turn away from today’s sickening obsession with getting rich at all cost and by whatever means, if we do no present alternative stories of successes founded on grit, creativity, determination, integrity and other positive values by our men and women of yesterday? Or do we simply fold our arms and let the country be tossed to and fro by ‘I beta pas my neighbour’ mentality? Or are nations no longer built on the back of clearly spelt-out visions? Where is ours? If our businesses are built and running on the strength of identifiable visions, what are they? We hear one president’s vision was to produce 50 billionaires. Questionable as that vision is, but how did he go about achieving that? Is there something in the way he worked on that vision that the country can borrow a leaf from? Is there anything in the way those businesses translated into the billion-dollar entities that we can take a cue from?
Governance of all the sectors – health, education, etc. – yearns for disruption. Disruption does not care about morality. People simply embrace more effective and affordable means of meeting their needs. The way a new technology or innovation comes to push aside an old technology or births a revolutionary and different approach is what we are in dire need of…
You look around and wonder. Where are the godfathers of banking of yesteryears? What do we make of their vision of yesterday and their stories? Where did things go wrong for them? What has become of the ‘captains of industry’, as we like to call them, of yesteryears? What has become of their businesses that once commanded the heights of the economy? How many of these businesses have passed from one generation to the other? Was there any case of disruption? Or is it only the sorry story of how people ‘set up’ or bought into banks to rob them and steal from depositors and shareholders that we have to share? If what we have to showcase are those who applied funds under their care to set up private empires, what stories can they truly tell? Are there chapters in their stories some of them will rather not share?
Of course, there are the many more, unknown and unsung Nigerians quietly sweating on their dreams, in spite of an uneven field rigged with mines of an inclement environment, incoherent policies and unfriendly banking regime. These ones find themselves behind the starting block, yet they must operate in the same space with those whose nuts have been cracked by crooked, benevolent gods who have compromised the system at all points.
But Nigeria is one large expanse of land buffeted by all sorts of challenges, even when the opportunities for greatness are themselves embedded therein. What she waits for is massive disruption in thinking and mind-set. Governance of all the sectors – health, education, etc. – yearns for disruption. Disruption does not care about morality. People simply embrace more effective and affordable means of meeting their needs. The way a new technology or innovation comes to push aside an old technology or births a revolutionary and different approach is what we are in dire need of, with the public working in the sync with the private to think us out of the hole we have found ourselves in.
Where are the stories that can inspire the translation of genuine vision, creativity and sweat into birthing Nigeria’s own Google, Apple, AliBaba and Uber? Where are the stories that can inspire ideas that can bring about disruption in governance? We need stories of genuine endeavours, not fractured with k-legs, to share with those dreaming and looking up from the bottom.
It is not as if we have not seen what it is like to experience some form of disruption. The Card Reader brought about some sort of disruption with major impact on the result of the 2015 elections. The BVN scheme and TSA policy, if duly implemented and the banks will allow, have within them seeds of possibility for engineering a disruption that can strike a fatal blow to the belly of formal corruption in the system.
But then, the challenge in the private sector remains the dearth of stories. Where are the real stories not linked to shoddy or non-execution of government contracts, manipulation of government regulation for profit and personal advantage? Where are the successes not linked to misapplication of waivers, abuse of provisions for tax holiday, dodgy payment of customs duties, outright stealing of shareholder funds mopped up cheaply from the capital market?
Where are the success stories in the banks that were not involved in manipulation of the stock market in the last decade, forex round tripping, ghost banking and sundry money laundering schemes on behalf of public officials? Where are the authentic stories, devoid of huge exposure to financial institutions, while they live beyond any conceivable means? Where are the stories that can inspire the translation of genuine vision, creativity and sweat into birthing Nigeria’s own Google, Apple, AliBaba and Uber? Where are the stories that can inspire ideas that can bring about disruption in governance? We need stories of genuine endeavours, not fractured with k-legs, to share with those dreaming and looking up from the bottom.
Simbo Olorunfemi works for Hoofbeatdotcom, a Nigerian Communications Consultancy. Twitter: @simboolorunfemi
