Editor's Pick

I sat down today thinking of the topic for my write up. My mind was blank and empty like a cup drained of its content . Then Blam! CNN was reporting the case of tax evasion by companies such as Facebook. I went through the motions, daydreaming about the opportunities availed by sheer geographical priviledge, of being in a vast market of over 300 million people. America, with her cardinal values of Democracy and free markets had created such opportunities from  Bill Gates who founded Microsoft ,Jerry yang and David Filo who founded yahoo in the 90s, to Segey Brin and Larry Page who founded google , Mark Zuckerburg Facebook and many others now classified as “Unicorns”. I pondered on, Why have these vast opportunities often eluded Nigerian youths?

Many creative minds who have ventured into business activities with such optimism only to be  bombed out of oblivion like travellers with no acumen. Why have we not gotten success stories like the Microsoft, Facebook etc. There seems to be a linear relationship between the Silicon valley  Start ups  and their counterparts in Nigeria. Other  parts of the world have enjoyed their share of enterpreneural successes on a global scale, check China’s Alibaba driven by Ceo Jack Ma ( A former classroom teacher) or India’s Wipro.

All these may  be traceable to  the structure of the Nigerian economy in the past. So many great ideas  but little implementation due to lack of finances and basic infrastructure. The Nigerian banking system is not yet programmed to service start up businesses( infact they have a crude reputation for not looking beyond their nose) unless you can get past the collateral stage which anyway means the bank is not really taking any risk as you could as well have raised the money yourself . What would you say about institutions who  pride themselves on taking public money as deposits and instead of investing in loans (intermediation) simply  prop up it’s Treasury bill holdings. Thank God for some of the maneuvers of the regulators to check this. How on earth are honest business plans meant to take off? But then many of the silicon valley successes probably had no access to Banks initially, However, a critical success factor for them was the presence of Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists. The Angel  Investor usually are affluent investors who believe in the dream in it’s very early stage and make an investment in equity or debt when there is almost nothing. For the Venture Capitalist, the investment  is made in a promising  or novel technology . The enabling environment , with laws in place to guide and prosecute defaulters ensure investors are protected.

Nigeria today presents that opportunity to play in the big league taking the entertainment Industry  and the technology to drive it. A good example is Jason Njoku’s Iroko TV largely technology driven. I remember I was in Nottingham in 2011 with my good friend  Kayode ,when I first came across Iroko TV, I soon realized it was the go to place for Nigerian movies,  and why would nt it be? They had built a library of over 5,000 Nigerian movies by just closing the gap and buying the licenses of those movies with a You Tube partnership, this enabled them to attract Venture Capital funds in their early days. The Bank of Industry in recent times has set up a fund for Nollywood to support serious production “Nollyfund” of N2 billion, and  an obligor limit of N50 million. This is a step in the right direction , although it is like discovering your treasure in a shark infested sea. The issue of piracy and copyright needs to be brought to the fore and that is what I expect people like Desmond Elliot to champion in the House. The Nigerian entertainment Industry, is a multi billion industry on it’s way to happening and investors who can tap into it’s value chain and successfully turn it around or make an input like Njoku, stand to take home a prize.

The Government  has a lot to gain by championing this industry and ensuring the adequate laws are in place to protect it. Especially now that government is getting ready to tax even the “air”.Fixing piracy , will send a strong message and investors would come flocking to take their piece of the pie. I sincerely look forward to a time in the near future when Nigerian youths will join people like Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos  at their rightful places on the Forbes list.