Forbes ran an article recently about Arica’s youngest billionaire Ashish Thakka. The dude was in Nigeria recently and met with President GEJ. He claims to have businesses that employ about 200 Nigerians and just commissioned a Glass Plant in Calabar.
He also said he has invested about $100m and plans to invest another $110. He even plans to go into IT and Communications industry. However, the fascinating thing about his interview was when asked about why he is so confident in investing in Nigeria this was what he said.
You can feel it, you can feel the energy, I have been coming here for few years. We have offices in 22 African countries. The CNN recently asked me my favourite country in Africa and I said Nigeria. “This is something that we are very serious about and we are very confident of.”
On the negative reports on the country, Thakkar said, “There is a huge difference between perception and reality.” I think the perception happened to be negative today, but it is a very unfortunate case because when we come here, what we see and what we experience show that Nigeria is a very different place.
“Nigeria is going through transformation; and I think Africa as a whole, we are going through transformation and I think one thing as Africans is that we are 54 countries and we generalise in our assessments.”
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