Nigeria; Home of Opportunities: By Abiona Wahab Abiodun
Though, many Nigerians find it difficult to comprehend or accept that Nigeria is a home of several opportunities as I put in my tittle. I want to put it to us that there are several opportunities which are strengths for us. Meanwhile, Nigeria also have weaknesses and threats as well. These are common indicators in any society, both in private and public organizations.
When listing factors that enable society or organization to grow globally, after highlighting what to produce, how to produce and for whom to produce, which further bring out factors such as kind of output to produce, human and capital resources, another major and critical “factor” is market, which is for whom to produce is readily available in Nigeria. Other conditions are location, transportation amongst others are also important for development of any businesses.
Why is Nigeria a home of opportunities? Market is a strong factor while considering production, because without demand there can never be production, not to talk of supplies. Though, both compliment each other. That is why we see advanced economies looking for market before they start to produce in larger quantities and their targets are usually developing nations like ours.
Nigeria has population that can develop itself. Our population of over 200 millions is enough to make us great if we tap into the opportunities and strengths, make production of what our people demand and consume. We have the population that consume everything globally, the next thing is to produce what we consume, then we buy from ourselves. There is nothing we produce in Nigeria that will not get buyers.
However, production will create jobs, reduce poverty, rate of crime will drop once more hands are engaged. This on a longer way will promote our exports, our growth towards meeting industrial Nations will come to us easily, provided we have broken up the threats and weaknesses.
Our threats and weaknesses are so enormous, ranging from individual to group or community and Government.
Most individuals in Nigeria are not ready to work, they solely want to rely on another individual or the other and Government. Money from politics, free money, if it does not come, the target individuals or Government have not done well to them. Some organizations too rely on Government patronages. No individual market can sustain them, we need to change the narration if we must move to the next levels as expected.
The insecurity in our land is a great threat to our Industrial revolution, because no business man will like to invest in a society that is not secured. Our infrastructural decay in terms of road, power supply and distribution, portable water, health facility, internet facility amongst others are key things that we lack. They constitute greatly to our threats and weaknesses limiting our growth and development.
Conclusively, our population is our strength and at the same time opportunity for us to break open, after we have taken care of all the the threats and weaknesses. Population of over 200million is not a small thing to us but gold.
Individual must be ready to work, be productive and ready to share knowledge. Then group of people must be ready to pool resources together, grow it and be purposeful. Government must be ready to create enabling environment, in terms of infrastructure, power, road network, health facility amongst others, including provision of security for the populace and this will reduce unemployment, poverty and lead to our growth and development.
Abiona Wahab Abiodun,
Unit 003, Ward 08,
Olonde Compound,
Ikirun, Ifelodun Local Government,
State of Osun.
