The three piece suit and tie is my pet peeve. Incredibly swanky, undeniably formal, exuding power and promising knowledge, the fully attired banker in four layers of clothing on a hot Monday morning in Lagos is a museum piece. Nothing about this gentleman belongs in a 30 degree extreme humidity city with the air quality of Bombay.
I have been told some ladies find men in the formal western
attire with the funny rope hanging around the neck attractive so I will pick my
words carefully. Having been conditioned by decades of perceiving power and
knowledge in the form of a suited European gentleman, it was only natural our
newly formed elite inherit civilization in a sweaty package, the 3-piece. And
successful men it seemed, all wore suits. It evidenced education, a profession,
elitism.
But I never ceased to imagine the damning transfer of jobs
that each pair of suit represents, each mindless tie purchased, each impressive
pair of Italian shoes to match. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousand of people
mimicking their erstwhile oppressors in every possible way, attributing
civilization to a foreign way. The millions of ties, suits and shirts purchased
over the decades represents jobs that could have been done by our people but we
outsourced by choice. Some will say for a good reason, others will even argue
the amount is insignificant.
Except that it isn’t, and the experience with suit has
replicated itself in so many aspect of our lives to a point that we can no
longer worship without importing ointments, we cannot build without Italian
marbles, we bury our dead with caskets from abroad and when we pour libation to
our ancestors, the spirits is rarely of our land.
Let’s delve into the economics of this way of being, of
wasting scarce foreign exchange on things we do not need to import, of failing
to produce the things we could, of continuing to mimic a culture that requires
us to remain economically teetered to others at the cost of the unemployment of
our people.
But first, let me say this — I am no stranger to foreign exchange and trade
theories, I hold a degree in economics and my dissertation( MONETARY THEORY AND
MACROECONOMIC MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA, available on academia) which was published
in 1995, delves into some of the financial markets issues bedeviling us today.
But this is not an academic treatise, this is my reflections at the cross roads
of culture and productivity, and how the personal choices we make define the
society that evolves around us. I believe that it will eventually explain
everything from inflation to crime, from unemployment to extreme poverty. But
it is more art than science at this point, more anecdotes than technical data.
Let’s throw some numbers around, see where it lands. There
are just under 100,000 financial services professionals in Nigeria today, up
from about 50,000 20 years ago. While not everyone of them can afford Hugo
Boss, I have put an estimate for their annual spend on the infamous 3-piece and
other western fashion accessories at $500 ( averages can be helpful). Thats a
possible $50m ( N60b ) in value that could have been partially domesticated.
And if you think my estimates are high for our expenditure on foreign fashion,
consider that it’s not only bankers, we have all kinds of professions and
wedding processions, children decked out in discomforting outfits, ladies in
designer lingeries. Imagine this avoidable expenditure cumulated over the
decades, the repeated self harm.
I can understand the argument for a man to wear his 3-piece
in peace, it’s a free world after all. What about the relentless import of
cheap Chinese gift items or award plaques that adds zero economic value to our
country? Why can’t the awards and gifts be locally handcrafted, thereby
producing unique and authentic artifacts that holds value instead of those
generic bland glass moulds that every award ceremony hands out? Why can’t we be
intentional about putting our people to work, using sustainable materials,
creating respectable jobs, in small and big ways?
The stories of importing things we don’t need at the
expenses of investing in our economy is one we are all too familiar with, and
you can probably list a dozen items on that menu you wish we didn’t import
because we don’t really need them. Like those expensive super cars that merely
grace our garages, or the rusty zinc roof that replaced our traditional
architecture, or the harmful asbestos that was once a measure of men.
But let’s talk about the cultural dimension to our continued
self harm in the name of being cultured, exposed or well travelled. My story
goes back to December 2020, when, in the middle of COVID, a friend invited me
on a road trip to chart a new tourist experience themed the pounded yam trail.
To cut a long story short, the adventure saw us traveling through the towns
most famous for pounded yam in the South West. We visited Ondo, Ekiti, Osun and
Ogun states, with memorable stops in Imesi Ile, Arinta falls, Ado Ekiti and the
ancient Ondo town, where we had a memorable lunch for 3 at a cost of two
thousand Naira, followed by dinner by a campfire. It remains one of my most
memorable vacation and in my telling of it, is beginning to assume an epic
dimension. Nigeria is full of unrealized potentials because we are stubbornly
focused on what is out there rather than what is in here, consistently
dissipating valuable oil resources all over the world but very little interest
in experiences that can creat jobs for our people and a tourist destination for
the rest of the world.
At this point, I expect someone to bring up insecurity, a
fair point. Except that we are suffering the consequences of abandoning our
communities, our insecurity today is the outcome of our underinvestment in our
people, not the reason for it. Contest this if it pleases you, but take time to
chart a map of Nigeria, the violence perfectly mirrors the poverty.
There’s an entire economy of the consumption choices we
make, from fine wine to destination weddings, that feed the hunger of our
people. We don’t connect the dots because it is our right to spend our
resources as we please, but it comes at a cost, both social and economic. It
doesn’t matter that you are extremely hardworking and well educated, that your
parents sacrificed so you can succeed, the baseline is unless the rest of the
society is gainfully employed, you don’t have the podium to toot your progress,
the wealthy in a failed society are often seen as bandits by the poor, and
deemed legitimate target of violence.
Speaking out is easy for me because I am as guilty as the
next guy, I struggle everyday to domesticate my taste, to localize my
consumption, to invest in our people even when my business sense tells me I can
get more elsewhere. But I stumble everyday because I also appreciate the
quality we don’t yet have, the education from traveling, and I desire the finer
things too. I now proudly wear cloths that are finely tailored by our own, at a
fraction of my Italian store budgets ( even though I was never one of those to
invest in an expensive wardrobe), I have a preference for local food, and
‘summer’ is not a thing in my household.
The unfortunate thing about these choices is that it will
eventually be made for us under very different and much more difficult
circumstances if we don’t make them ourselves. Those who are old enough to
remember austerity measures and the rationing of essential commodities might
have forgotten how painful it was, and how our years of living large in the
seventies and eighties got us there.
We often blame government for its excesses, for its
corruption, for its failure to plan, for ignoring all the signs. And we should.
But our government is of us, a man who must have his French wine even as many
lack access to clean water, will purchase Italian furniture for his office when
he becomes a minister, he will insist on expensive SUVs where a much cheaper
vehicle would do. He is a man with a culture of excess, a questionable sense of
success in the midst of squalor. And so the change must begin at home, with us.
Or not at all.
The next time you see a spike in the exchange rate published
by abokifx, remember that it captures the impact of easy money by the
government via ways and means, it represents the consequences of the decay in
our oil and gas industry, leading to historically low output, it encompasses
the corruption in our government as evidenced by our transparency ranking, it
summarizes the result of our wastages and the years of neglect of critical
industries like petrochemical and steel.
But it also captures the economic consequences of our
adopted western life, one that subtly suggests our food are for the poor, our
clothes for the unenlightened and our destinations are budget. If we want a
different type of country, one in which our people are put to work making the
things we need and exporting the excess, we must first begin by appreciating
the things we have and the crafts we are good at. We must delegitimize the
mindset that foreign is always better, and insist that what we have at the
start is good enough for a start.
Only by doing this can we avert the impending social strife
arising from millions of young people with nothing to do because their jobs
have been exported by the choices we make.
It is not that we cannot afford to live like this for a
while, we clearly can. But can we afford to live in the society that is left
behind?
Final note: if you are triggered by this, your wristwatch is
worth three times the annual minimum wage. And 9 out the 10 things nearest to
you right now is imported. Thats why it hurts.
Abubakar Suleiman, 30 January 2024.
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