The dilemma of a people too capricious to engage in production, by Ola Emmanuel –

In the articles titled “When Five Percent is Better Than One Hundred Percent” and “You Can’t Take Pepper Soup and Water the Same Way” I tried to highlight the unique challenges faced by micro and small entrepreneurs in Nigeria. I have tried to shed light on the rising costs of products in the market, the lack of business management skills among MSME actors, and the problems that full liberalization of the energy and electricity will lead to which, if the necessary precautions are not taken, many MSMEs will find it very difficult to continue their activities, and many of them will collapse. The summary is that entrepreneurs must take a new approach to doing business because individualism will have to give way to innovative collaborations; and those who cannot cooperate with others to develop effectively, and who are drunk on titles and are control freaks, will lose their insufficient resources at lightning speed.

July in the year 2022 was a month when reality struck for several businessmen and women in Nigeria, especially traders and consumers of foreign goods and services, who simply could not comprehend the high decibels screaming about what was to come to the country with the ever-increasing costs of goods and services. The simple logic is this: where you will allow strangers to take control of providing you with something that is fundamental to your well-being, you must also be able to exert good leverage over those strangers, a measure of power that will make them shiver a little. to a large extent when you act like you want to sneeze. But Nigeria does not realize this. The country chooses to be a consumer economy in a global stage where it has nothing of significant advantage to offer or bring to market in this contemporary age where the global economy is one of intense competition and an exercise in control .

I postulated in one of the articles I mentioned in the opening paragraph that due to intense competition doing good business, from now on, is going to be able to take control of either production, either take control of the market or take ownership of the policy frameworks that exert greater influence over how a business should be conducted in a given economy. The deregulation of the energy and electricity sector and the inability to ensure an adequate supply of products and services, coupled with the continuous fall in the value of the national currency, have combined to make the property very precarious. -being of more than 200 million people living in a boneless economy that is Nigeria. To start doing now what should have been done thirty or twenty years ago means that the immediate future will be very painful in terms of people’s well-being; but not starting something now and letting the ship of the country continue to drift will be more painful and a duly signed death warrant.

With a liter of diesel, a major material input for power generation, at over N800 per liter and an exchange rate of over N700 to the dollar in a one hundred percent consumption economy, production costs necessities will break through the roof, unemployment will rise as more businesses close, hunger and poverty will be more widespread, and there will be a growing wave of insecurity. To stop this ugly situation, the private sector must organize to deploy a more sustainable and sustainable approach to doing business. Going through the rising costs of products and services and other unpleasant signals, we are now in a time where everyone involved in using funds for business, investing and wealth creation needs to take an approach concerted and collaborative production. This is the next strategy to reduce the ever increasing costs of doing business since individual performance at the micro and small level will bring little or nothing to show for the efforts. The associated stress will have a negative impact on the quality of life. With the current state of the country’s economy, individualism in business will suffer seriously. Nigeria finds itself in the current situation because the rulers and the citizens have chosen to turn their backs on production and become consumers of the products of others. The effect is the virtual absence of value of the country’s currency. If they don’t rise together, they don’t find themselves in the mold of Zimbabwe and Venezuela where banknotes are carried with bags to buy loaves of bread.

God has already given mankind the wisdom, knowledge and understanding to make things happen. God frees us from two powers: economic and political powers. He gave us the economic power, the people, to give more meaning to our lives and our existence. Therefore, we must organize and exercise God-given power on a scale that will engage the attention of all stakeholders locally, nationally and globally.

Ola Emmanuel is a business and cooperative planning consultant.