Aba, one of the ancient cities in Nigeria is nicknamed “Japan of Africa”. In Aba, more than 50, 000 hand-made shoes are churned out daily. In little corners of this ancient city, hardworking men of giant minds are known to replicate the kind of creative imagination for which the three Japanese cities of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka are known today. Most important are the ingenuity and the industry of its people in handcrafts including manufacturing, fashion and design, steel works, fabrication etc. Virtually every street in Aba has its own fair share of businesses.
However, the city is fast ebbing into oblivion, with the sanity of inhabitants becoming severely strained. Total government negligence and blatant attitudinal degeneration of inhabitants have transmogrified Aba into a slum, where sewage flowed down the dirt filled streets with putrid sewage from the garbage piles – turning the roads into putrid smelling mud slides that folks just walk through like it was nothing.
The original Japan is a country “in the moon”. It’s presently the world’s third largest economy by nominal GDP and the world’s fourth largest economy by PPP. It’s the second largest producer of automobiles in the world. It’s a leading nation in scientific research and has produced 16 Nobel Laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine. It leads the world in robotics production, possessing more than half of the world’s industrial robots. It’s the third largest free market economy in the world; and it has the longest overall life expectancy at birth of any country in the world. In Japan, persons born between 2010 and 2015 are expected to live above 83.5 years.
From the foregoing, do Aba, Onitsha, Kano and Lagos cities of Nigeria in any way replicate the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka etc? One of the colossal causes of the geometrical retrogression of these Nigerian cities is indiscipline. In his book, “The Trouble with Nigeria”, late Achebe wrote that “Indiscipline pervades our lives so completely that one may be justified in calling it the condition par excellence of contemporary Nigerian society”. Why would Onitsha Main Market, Ariaria Market Aba and Balogun Market Lagos brag about being among the largest open air markets in West Africa? Are they not aware that open air marketing is a brainchild of indiscipline and not abreast with the 21st century strategies of efficient marketing?
In Onitsha and Aba for instance, there are no marked distinctions between markets, industrial layouts and residential areas. In these cities, you can live anywhere, trade anywhere (even in the middle of a highway) and build anything anywhere – people even attach petrol stations to residential houses and no one makes a noise. Something must be done with the speed of light to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat on behalf of all notable Nigerian cities. Apart from rebuilding the foundations of these cities and the provision of basic amenities, something must be done to encourage the patronization of ‘made in Nigeria’ products by Nigerians.
In Aba for instance, clothings and wears better than those from Europe and the UK are produced daily but with ‘made in Italy’ and ‘made in England’ tags. The reasons given by the manufacturers were that if the products were to come with ‘made in Aba’ labels, nobody will buy. In most cases, to make these ‘fake’ products more original, the producers are tempted to first export them to nearby African countries were most unsuspecting Nigerians will now go and smuggle them into the country as foreign goods and sell them as such.
The Japans and Dubais in Nigeria; Aba, Onitsha, Kano and Lagos juggle trillions in gross domestic output daily, and so has the potentials to develop this country and make it prominent just as Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka did to Japan, and Dubai to the UAE, especially in this period that the contribution of crude oil to the GDP is expected to reduce. But first and foremost, a determined government must brace up to adequately invest and harness these potentials just as Japan and UAE did.
Orji Iheanyi is a political analyst and consultant agronomist and can be reached at orjilla@gmail.com