We’re turning Aba into Nigeria’s fast rising ‘China of Africa’ – Abia government

Businesses all over the world mostly thrive on collaborations and mergers, pooling of resources and allocating them among competing demands. These businesses are then scaled and prioritised depending on the needs and expectations of the consumers.

But these seem to be lacking presently in the Nigeria’s fast-rising ‘China of Africa’, Aba, the economic nerve centre of Abia State.

This is as a result of the individualistic tendencies of its artisans and entrepreneurs which seem to be a limiting factor and the reason why Made-in-Aba is still at the level of artisanship instead of major corporations.

“The Aba man, because of his innate protectionist tendency finds it difficult to partner with his brother or with 10, 15 other people to pool resources and buy one machine; one person obviously cannot buy the required machine because it is too expensive. They are afraid of the other person seeing what they are doing, like in an exam class, everybody is covering their answer sheet so the next person doesn’t see it”, this was the submission of Sam Hart, co-founder, chief coordinator of project Made-in-Aba in an interview with BDSUNDAY.

However, the general consensus is that there is light in the horizon as Nigerians are coming to terms with patronage of the locally-produced goods.

Indeed, Hart was quick to add, “We are breaking that barrier and we are getting there.”

Hart has been at the forefront of recent coordinated media branding approach of Made-in-Aba products geared towards changing the face of business in Nigeria and creating acceptability of these items which had previously nose-dived because of lack of quality control and substandard products.

Speaking on why the Made-in-Aba has been at base level this long, Hart said: “Aba had security issues; a lot of people left, companies closed and all of that but that has been resolved. Aba is very safe for business and investment. We do not want government investing in this project because government has proven over time to be quite terrible at running businesses, so we want to create the enabling environment and then allow large corporations to come in, invest, and open factories. Private businessmen actually should come in; bring in their funds, set up some of these mechanised operations that enable them to bring in their equipment and machineries to make things faster, smoother, neater and the finishing is perfect”.

It is a known fact that most established businessmen from the East do not invest much in that region because according to Hart, “it goes beyond passion, you have to give them value for their money because they worked hard for it. We do not have an entitlement mentality that says a Coscharis, Innoson, or whoever must come and invest in Aba, no. They have put their investment where they believe they will have returns on investment. They are businessmen, investors first and foremost and Lagos has provided value for them on returns on their investment. We are concentrating on providing that same value and we believe that once we provide that value proposition, they will come on board to invest in what we are doing.”

Meanwhile former president Olusegun Obasanjo who recently had his Made-in-Aba shoe order delivered to him personally by the governor, along with some members of the Made-in-Aba project said he was in discussion with African Export Import Bank and AfreximBank to set up a leather industrial city in Aba.

The project has faced a lot of debilitating obstacles previously and presently, for instance, the bulk of the raw materials in terms of textiles are sourced from abroad because almost all the textile mills in the country have shut down production. “It is difficult to get fabric locally so they are imported into Lagos and then transported down to Aba- they called bale- so they untie these bales and bring out several types of fabrics from them. But the leather for the shoe makers, the bulk of it, like 95 percent of the leather used in Aba is sourced from Kano.

The governor of Sokoto State was in Aba recently and he pitched for Sokoto leather; saying it was the best. We don’t do hides and skin in the South East, we just consume, we don’t know how to process. But still on raw materials, we do some locally; we melt rubber to produce soles and then some other little things are being done in Aba. So it is the finished product actually that is made-in-Aba,” explained Hart, who is also senior special assistant to Abia State governor on public communications.

Full interview next Sunday

 

MABEL DIMMA