I got this article about Nigerian millionaires on time magazine and downloaded it for your reading pleasure.
Africa: The Nigerian Millionaires.
Along with pride in status and problems of self-government, independence
for the 31 nations of black Africa means
the emergence of black businessmen. A few flourish on cottage
industries, that early stage of every economy; some are the
opportunistic agents of the colonial companies that formerly ruled them.
Now, however, more of Africa's new businessmen are not only
university-trained and experienced but surprisingly sophisticated in
trade and finance. In Equatorial Africa, it is no longer unusual to see
a $200,000 letter of credit emerging from the folds of a native robe.
Nowhere is the new African businessman doing better than in Nigeria,
black Africa's most populous and most prosperous nation. With a
population of 55 million and an economy that grows 4% each year, the
number of Nigerian millionaires is growing almost as fast as the
country itself.
Peanuts & Petroleum. Even before Britain withdrew five years ago,
Nigeria had a flourishing trade, exporting peanuts, cotton, palm
kernels and cocoa and importing in exchange manufactured goods, foods
and tobacco The first native millionaires made their money by
competing with the white man for his trade. Among Nigeria's richest
businessmen is Alhaji Sanusi Dantata 46, who buys and ships much of the
rich Kano region's peanut crop. Dantata's agents last year bought
84,000 tons from small farmers, paid with traditional handfuls of coin
counted out in dusty village squares. Sir Odumegwu Ojukwu 66, knighted
shortly before independence, started off by importing dried fish for
resale to the nonfishing Nigerians then decided to ship the fish inland
himself instead of leaving the job to others. He also amassed the
country's largest fleet of "mammy wagons," the trucks that carry
Nigerians (including market women, which gives the trucks their name)
from place to place.
In today's new Nigeria, businessmen are more likely to succeed by
producing new goods or services. Sir Mobolaji Bank-Anthony, 59, known
as "The Black Englishman" for his impeccable manners and imperturbable
air, began by importing cuckoo clocks and marble statues. He now
controls or owns part of ten companies, including a tanker fleet and a
charter airline. Emmanuel Akwiwu, 43, earned law degrees at Cambridge;
returning home just as Nigeria's oil boom began he organized a company
that now has 70 vehicles, hauls oil rigs and supplies for British
Petroleum Ltd. Chief Shafi Lawal Edu, 54, who is president of Lagos'
chamber of commerce, has built a fleet of eight oil tankers. He owns a
silver-blue Rolls-Royce, but usually drives around in a
Mercedes—thinks it is less ostentatious.
No Need to Clash. Many Nigerian businessmen have taken advantage of the
novel opportunities that inevitably accompany broadening prosperity.
Chief Timothy Adeola Odutola, 63, a onetime farmer, developed a business to
produce bicycle tires for the growing army of bikes, has done so well
that he is adding a $1,700,000 plant, plans eventually to harvest his
own rubber from his 5,000-acre plantation. A former office worker, Ade
Tuyo, 63, cast around for a business that would have 'first priority in
people's spending" opened a bakery that today has four shops and makes
115 products. The firm's unusual name—De Facto Works
Ltd.—was shrewdly chosen by Tuyo to impress Nigerian bankers with the
fact that he was seriously in business.
Bayo Braithwaite, 36, one of Nigeria's younger businessmen, left a
British insurance company to found a firm that would write life
insurance on Nigerians which the British underwriters avoided. So
successful has Braithwaite been that his African Alliance Insurance Co
Ltd occupies a six-story Lagos home office and has 300 bush-beating
agents. Braithwaite lives in an elegant house in suburban Ikoyi, where
glass and concrete are deliberately intermixed with African folk art to
prove that "the two need never clash."
So, it is, too, with Nigerian business. The Nigerians feel that they
and their onetime white masters need never clash. "The time is coming,"
says Timothy Udutola, "when we will produce more than we can consume
and we will have to look outside Nigeria for markets" Against that
time, Nigeria is seeking joint ventures in Europe and the U.S., has also
concluded negotiations for eventual associate membership in the
European Common Market. Already it exports more to the Market than to
its old master, Britain.
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