It’s amazing how much ignorance pervades Nigerian discourse. The BA vs Arik issue buttresses this sickening reality. People blame foreign businesses for the failure of local ones all in the name of “patriotism”. Very soon MTN will be thrown out of Nigeria because they won a bid for a slot that Globacom contested for in South Africa. When Hitv won a bid sometime back we all were happy and supported them. What happened 3 years later? They couldn’t maintain and compete.Before then, the Nigerian government had gone to the English FA to fight for rights accruing to Nigeria. They won and we celebrated, In the end Multichoice won it back and now we even pay more. If its true, the rights to view for Africa is a lot more than it was before Hitv.
Whilst our business need to compete hard and fair they also need to put a long term operational plan in place that will ensure their business model are sustainable. Right now, our businesses are struggling with continuity and real growth Our Government on the other hand should realise sooner rather than later that in Nigeria certain businesses can’t thrive without govt doing it alone or foreign ownership. Nigerian Businesses just don’t have the financial muscle, experience and technical know how to run certain businesses. The Government rather than introduce efficiency to their operations prefer to sell our public utilities to buyers with no operational equity. It’s one thing to have equity(which is mostly leveraged) to buy a privatised institution and another to have equity to actually run the biz. Arik can’t even maintain their local operations and now they drag the country into a needless discourse and dispute because they can’t simply pay.
I wonder what the govt did some years back when BA officials threw out a Nigerian who was protesting a deportation of their flight. Or what they have done to help numerous Nigerians who have seen their flights cancelled without recourse or remorse for the flimsiest of reasons. There are several people who have booked medical flights, business appointments, personal engagements. Some months before. Suddenly they have found themselves in a needless quagmire by a thoughtless govt that can’t doesn’t know it’s left from its right.
