NOTE: I urge you to open Spotify right now and find Nigeria’s top 50. Play it while you read this. If you’re not keen on pop music, listen to Fela Kuti instead. This is exactly what I do when I land in a new city, and I hope it helps you get in the mindset while reading this.
Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress.
Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress. Words etched on Nigeria’s coat of arms during its indepence from the Brits in 1960. A platitude notwithstanding, these pillars are emblematic of the gears within this society’s engine - the objectives it’s been striving for since its independence. It’s my first time traveling to Nigeria - Lagos, specifically - so I’m looking at the streets with utmost curiosity, observing the seemingly mundane. I am aware that much of what I’m writing here are anecdotes and may be one-sided. Reader beware! Or do provide your perspective in the comments.
Soft Naijan Landing
At first glance, few things catch my eye. The sheer number of people walking on the streets due to a lack of polished sidewalks, many of which are pushing wheelbarrows collecting scraps to sell in markets, or simply loitering. The roads, although they are paved, abound with potholes. The traffic is chaotic - I’m talking five cars in a three lane street, few of which are unscathed. “Driving is wild here.” Said one of our friends. “You have to watch all your angles at all times, and that doesn’t even fully protect you!” We later learned that many scratches on cars are done by policemen! They frequently stop drivers in search of a bribe with the pretext of some nonexistent misdemeanors, only for cars to swiftly drive away while the policeman scratches the cars instead of doing a full-on chase.
Tourism is hard!
Franchises? Not so many. A few Coldstones and KFCs, but no Starbuckses or Micky D’s. Very few establishments accept international credit cards, and most ATMs that let you withdraw cash do so in bouts of USD$25 so make sure to have your bank RM on speed dial as you’ll need to warn them of the 10 consecutive transactions you may have to make. A peculiar phenomenon emerges with this set-up. The establishments that do accept credit cards know that most people paying with cards are either oil-rich locals or foreigners paying on the company’s dime, so our bills, believe it or not, racked up to par with Miami prices! Not even Dubai was this expensive. Hotels, restaurants, clubs, and anything imported included.
The last overarching theme I’ll touch on is the hustle culture. What you do for work is often times the opening question into a conversation, yet unlike other places, many Nigerians actually want to work with you! They’ll be asking if you have any experience in their field, and then ask you for a phone number in order to keep in touch even if they never do.
Anyways, Unity, Faith, Peace, and Progress! We all know context is that which is scarce, so I will do my best to write a few words about my first impression of Nigerian culture. Although a daunting feat, Noah Smith’s series on Japan has given me the inspiration to tackle this even if briefly skimming over many topics. Of course, I’m no economist, so it will be less focused on economics and more on social sciences.
Before we dig in, let’s define the lay of the economic land.
0. Naijan Economics
The macroeconomic landscape is dominated by policies that favor the politicians above all else. Nigeria has a GDP per capita of $2,097 ($441B in total), having come off a peak of $3,000 in 2014 for reasons beyond the scope of this post. It is surprising that Nigeria’s top export is crude petroleum ($30B), while its top import is refined petroleum ($8B)! The reason for this is quite contentious, but likely due to it being much easier to sell crude oil and rake in the cash than it is to set up refineries at home. This dynamic has been causing a fuel crisis for quite some time, but sadly politicians aren’t addressing it with enough urgency for things to change in the near future.
On the more microscopic side, a noteworthy aspect of the culture is the amount of wealth and status being passed down through generations. Many of our friends work at their parents’ businesses, and many of their uncles or cousins own or operate other large enterprises. Watching a handful of films such as Lionheart and the more recent Blood Sisters, it’s easy to see that these aren’t just our friends. Much of the elites’ family worries come down to who will inherit the family’s throne - an indication that trust amongst people isn’t high enough to choose a successor who isn’t part of the family [1]. Heck, you don’t even have to watch any series! Just scroll through the movie posters and you’ll see the same actors in most movies. “It’s not that they’re the best. It’s who they trust,” told us one of our taxi drivers.
Alright, let’s finally start to break down the motto in the coat of arms!
1. Unity
Unity being the first of the pillars is not by chance. Reading Half of a Yellow Sun about the Nigerian civil war following their independence from the British, gives one an good idea of how deeply rooted these cultural divides are. In short, four languages dominate Nigeria’s daily communications - Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and Nigerian Pidgin, the lingua franca of the region as it is a creole language that developed as a means of communication between speakers of different languages in Nigeria. Curious about how it sounds? This Youtube video gives you a great glimpse into the language.
These are in addition to other 500 or so dialects spoken by tribes outside the city. This divide goes beyond the language, however. Geographical boundaries and histories of the time made it such that the majority of Hausa people are Muslim while the Yoruba and Igbo are Christian. In the north also live the dangerous Boko Haram - an extremist Islam sect appearing on the news and causing atrocities in the country. Briefly, the Hausa-Fulani are muslim due to the arrival of Muslim clerics and traders from Northern Africa in the 11th century, while the Igbo and Yoruba are Christian after the arrival of missionaries with European colonization in the 1860s.
So, to this day, most Muslims (Hausa-Fulani) live in the north of Nigeria, where Abuja, the capital, is, and the Igbo and Yoruba live in the south, where Lagos is. Even within the Igbo and the Yoruba, however, there’s still some tacit separation. A friend was telling me he can tell whether someone is Igbo or Yoruba just by giving them a brief glance - the way they dress, walk, and talk.
This divide in ethnicity, religion, and language is so large it even permeates politics! The two main political parties in Nigeria are the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People's Democratic Party (PDP). The APC is a center-right party that was formed in 2013 through the merger of several smaller parties - predominantly from the north, supported by Muslims, Hausa-Fulani. The PDP is a center-left party that was founded in 1998 and has held power at various times since then - predominantly from the south, supported by the Igbo and Yoruba.
There is one thing that does unite Nigerians… Many of them are so proud of their country that they blame many issues on immigrants from Mali, Niger, and Chad. Hungry kids you see in the streets begging for food? Immigrants. Shootings in the north of the country? Immigrants. Rebels attacking gas pipelines? Immigrants. Some people do think the government is connected with these rebels, but that’s a whole other topic of discussion. If you’re curious, this Youtube video provides a great overview about this topic.
A few Bolt rides around Lagos gave us a glimpse into drivers’ perception of the country, and sadly, many of them think they’re headed into a civil war. The government is too visibly corrupt, and COVID impacted people enough to warrant an uprising. Nigeria has a long way to go to unite its people, and sadly very little is being done in order to achieve this… except for softer cultural pride.
Music, Film, and Fashion
Check out any top 50 chart of countries around the world. With a few exceptions, the majority of songs are from the US, the Dominican Republic (or Maluma’s Colombia), or Korea. A quick glance at Nigeria’s top 50 tells a different story. Even with their ubiquitous “STRE-AT FROM LUONDAN” intros, the majority of songs are sung by Nigerians. Be it Afro beats, Juju, or Yoruban music, Nigerians are proud of their tunes. “You know Carlos Santana?” “Of course - I’m Latin,” I answer. “Carlos Santana got so inspired by Fela [Kuti, the father of Afro Beats,] that he’s been to his shrine many times. So has Emmanuel Macron actually. The place is so influential, the government has starting taking good care of it.” Quite a statement considering Fela was so anti-establishment and caused a ruckus in and out of Nigeria countless times (a nice profile of Fela can be found here). I found several different numbers attempting to capture the size of Nigeria’s music industry, but I remain skeptical of these as the greatest musicians, like Davido and Wizkid, end up doing business predominantly in the US or the UK.
Nollywood is another outstanding source of pride within Nigerians. Coming in around a hot $7B in size, and a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.3%, Nollywood is one of the country’s largest industries, and this doesn’t include any pirated media. If you hadn’t heard of Nollywood, go on Netflix and search for it. You’ll be surprised at the sheer number of films offered.
Music and Nollywood make Nigerians proud. For what it’s worth, these are some of the strongest forces uniting Nigerians while simultaneously exerting soft power in the form of cultural influence over the rest of the continent. And I haven’t even touched on the fashion industry, a $5B industry that is absolutely thriving. The problem, however, is a massive brain drain. Unless the designer comes from a reputable and well known family, they are unlikely to stay in Nigeria - the market, and I mean both the production facilities as well as the consumer base, just isn’t ready for them.
And that’s it for the first pillar! I’ll be writing about the other three in upcoming posts, so make sure to subscribe, and let me know how your thoughts below or at nlandmanc@gmail.com :)
Until next time!
PS: The use of "Naija" as a nickname for Nigeria is thought to have originated in the 1990s, when it was first used by Nigerian hip hop and reggae artists. It quickly gained popularity and has since become a widely recognized term for Nigeria, both within the country and internationally.
The economic landscape as a whole is as follows: the top exports of Nigeria are crude petroleum ($30B), petroleum gas ($5.89B), scrap vessels ($1.29B), special purpose ships ($775M), and refined petroleum ($613M), exporting mostly to India ($6.27B), Spain ($4.8B), China ($2.54B), Netherlands ($2.24B), and South Africa ($2.17B). For reference, Russia’s crude and refined petroleum exports reached $80B and $50B respectively before the war began, and the UAE exports $42B and $22B of crude and refined oil respectively. So Nigeria’s $30B is no small number!
[1] Rentsch, J. R., & Scott, W. G. (2006). Trust and the selection of successors. Journal of Business Research, 59(7), 841-847.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Nigeria/The-arrival-of-the-British
https://chinadialogue.net/en/food/illustrated-history-of-industrial-palm-oil/#:~:text=Palm%20oil%20was%20also%20perfectly,were%20hard%20put%20to%20meet.
https://smarthistory.org/benin-and-the-portuguese/