By merely living in Nigeria, you stand a great risk of losing your humanity; losing your sense of right and wrong. Losing your sense of justice. Becoming very tolerant of incompetence.
This nation simply "shrugs them off", waiting for the next abomination.
"Nigeria" dulls your sense of outrage; you are perpertually in "survival mode". You lose your vision, you live like a rat, a hustler.
You lose your sense of justice.
You contributed money to "buy a new transformer", but you have no electricity. You pay taxes to an opaque state government, but you are ready to vote them again - because "they are working". They are building flyovers.
Your toll gate fees and land use charges were increased.
You did nothing, said nothing. You said the state government is "working".
Yet, with all the money the "working state government" makes, you wouldn't send your kids to a state run school.
You have a problem with your neighbour. You have friends in SARS, you pay them off to "teach him a lesson". "Justice" be damned.
Your neighbour has friends in the Army. He brings them to settle the squabble.
You'll never understand what "justice" is.
For all their loudness, Nigerians are docile.
Nigerians are "aggressive", but they have resigned themselves to a future of mediocrity.
Hustlers do not dream, they hustle.
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Brazil (GDP - $2.139 trillion)
Russia (GDP - $1.719 trillion)
India (GDP - $2.848 trillion)
China (GDP - $14.092 trillion)
South Africa (GDP - $326.5 billion)
This is a group of heavy hitters, and South Africa is the clear outlier here.
South Africa gets "a seat at the table" and an opportunity to be treated as an equal in this group. Nigeria should also pitch for a seat at this table, I will explain why - it has everything to do with the geopolitics of the 21st Century. Economics is important, but secondary.
China and India have huge populations, so they need to import a lot of food. When Trump came to power, China discovered that USA is no longer a reliable trading partner - so they will have to depend more on Brazil for soybeans & Russia for wheat & corn.
I was on a team that implemented an ERP for an Oil and Gas company. When we first arrived, a senior manager was a bit apprehensive because he was expecting to see "white faces" on our team.
This was a nagging issue with them, until they saw us deliver.
I know a bit about corporate Nigeria. If you want your proposal to go through (especially in the financial services sector), have one or two oyibo people on your team. The oyibo team member doesn't need to talk. Bankers like see oyibo people.
One of my colleagues told me a hilarious tale: an oyibo person was flown in, on questioning him, they found out he had no idea of the subject matter; but that was okay for easily impressionable bankers.