NIGERIAN BLOGS: INTRODUCTION

9/27/2018

NIGERIAN BLOGS

Dear Readers,

We are starting today a new series of Blogs entitled NIGERIAN BLOGS.

But before we proceed editing let us consider what the average Nigerian readers, for whom these blogs are destined, wish to read about.

1.- A house, a job, and a friendly community
As any human being on earth does, the interest of the average Nigerian is, foremost, to improve his/her living conditions, earn sufficient money to care for his/her family, find a stable and secure job, or seek to work independently. But, in addition to these instinctive reactions, there are also higher ideals and goals. They may want to see their neighbors and their relatives enjoy life the way they would like to do. Man or Woman cannot live alone. They need the company of neighbors. They need to share the good things in life with them, as well as the inconveniences and the troubles.

2.- Are these the current living conditions of the average Nigerian?
As I may have told some of my readers in the past, I have lived permanently some ten years in Nigeria, three of them building, organizing, and managing a clothing manufacturing company in Nigeria, employing 265 workers and producing high quality clothing products that were, for the large part of them, exported to France. The rest of the time I spent it building a hotel for my son, starting it and running it for over three years. I also spent three other years years exporting to the United States and to Europe a large variety of Nigerian products (rubber, columbite and tantalite, sesame seeds, cashew nuts, wood products, and others) So, you can be sure that during these ten years I knew what my colleagues and my employees were thinking, feeling, and seeking during this period. I visited the homes of many of them, and saw the conditions they were living in and what they would have loved to possess, but could not afford to do so.

3.- What did these Nigerians seek more than anything else?
Let me answer this question with one word: a HOME! But not simply a HOME, they all wanted a HOME that they could call their own. Here, someone is bound to ask me: "But, these persons, did not live in homes?" No, my friends, most of them were living in rented houses under the wrong living conditions, and paying relatively high rents. But all this was nothing compared to the feeling that most of them were living under the threat of being evicted at any time, particularly if they delayed paying the exorbitant rents they were charged for extremely unsatisfactory living conditions.
Let me ask you one question my friends: Under such conditions, how can one expect that worker to work efficiently and produce the right quality products? I will not mention the matter of transport. I shall never forget the day when my old storekeeper happened to arrive 15 minutes later to work. When I remonstrated the fact,  he told me that he lived in a far away village and had to change over three buses and start up at 7 in the morning, in order to be at 9 am at work, every day. I checked upon all these facts and found them to be correct.

4.- How can one satisfy the basic needs that I have outlined above?
In my next publication I shall try to describe, as clearly as possible, HOW one can address all these problems, and what would be the advantages to the employers, but even more importantly, and ultimately to NIGERIA?