Danger! Indigenous economy going…

Mr. Rotimi Osuntola has made his choice. And it’s reasonable. He has effectively distanced himself from the chaos that has become of our dangling political space. And its maddening legion of crowds.

This, his piece, demonstrates just that. He opts to look elsewhere. He sees another dimension of danger and challenges. Equally frightening and frightful. Our ikl of wondrous politicians see nothing amiss in that. It’s their new normal. So, they unwisely choose to remain blind to it.

Perhaps, some of them are involved. Osuntola opts for the honourable path. He refuses to keep quiet. That will be a monumental disservice to his nation. The reason he shouts it loud and clear enough. And confronts the pandemic headlong. Before it consumes us all.

Osuntola stands on a solid rock. He speaks from a strong position of authority. He has a rich background at his beck and call. And deploys it appropriately.

He is former manager, National Bank of Canada, Senior Partner, M-SYSTEMS Canada Corp., Ontario, Canada. To cap it up, he specialises in Management/Procurement and IT Consulting.

His honest, genuine thoughts and conviction are what you are about to digest:

A Yoruba proverb says: “Ọgẹdẹ n bàjẹ́, ẹ ni o ńpọ̀n.” Translated: The plantain is getting bad yet we consider it to be ripening. That, in my view, is where Nigeria stands today.

For years, I have been examining a pattern in which indigenous people are progressively losing access to economic opportunities within their own environment, not necessarily because they lack entrepreneurial ability, but because they lack the capital, financing, institutional support and policy protection needed to compete effectively.

I have described this phenomenon as the Indigenous People’s Displacement Economy (TIPDE).

My concern is not with legitimate foreign investment or with any particular nationality. Foreign capital can create jobs, expand markets and contribute to economic development. The concern is what happens when better-capitalised external operators increasingly occupy the very commercial spaces that provide indigenous people with their most accessible entry into entrepreneurship.

This is not a new concern. In my 2022 research paper, “The Dangers of the Effects of the Indigenous People Displacement Economy System”, I examined how government policies and economic structures can unintentionally—or sometimes through short-term transactional decisions—produce precisely this outcome.

On July 2, 2026, I revisited the subject publicly, writing: “We have for a while faced an Indigenous People Displacement Economy situation in Nigeria, and this is especially highly pronounced in the South West. When I discussed the outcome of my research with some economists in February 2025, they suggested forming a Think Tank Group to address this, which I agreed to. We then started to meet to strategise, with the intention of sharing our ideas with the ‘waiting-to-be-funded’ South West Development Commission (SWDC), on how to mitigate the threat. The rest, for now, is history.”

On July 20, 2026, I addressed the same subject in another discussion about the growing presence of non-local operators in Nigerian markets. I argued that the issue should not be reduced to foreigners versus Nigerians, or one Nigerian ethnic group versus another.

I wrote: “Why focus solely on foreigners? Are many major investments in the South West and across Nigeria not owned by Igbo and other Nigerians from different regions? The narrative is often far more complex than it is made out to be.

“Those making these criticisms from the sidelines should take time to investigate institutions like AMCON and examine how many business dreams have been crushed by prohibitive lending practices and the high cost of financing. They may then better understand why foreigners and non-indigenes continue to seize business opportunities that many South West entrepreneurs are unable to pursue because of insufficient access to capital.

“Unfortunately, many African countries continue to build what I would describe as an ‘Indigenous People Displacement Economy’—a system in which locals are progressively excluded from economic opportunities because they lack the financial capacity and institutional support needed to participate effectively.”

Another contributor, a former HoR Legislator captured the policy problem succinctly as he wrote: “Policymakers should have the ability to see beyond temporary good. Unfortunately, we tend to consider what is just expedient or transactional for long term good. And once it is good for me, my family, my clique and cohort, it must be good.”

He then asked a question that deserves serious consideration: “Do you imagine that if Nigerians become a very wealthy group in the UK, buying all their properties and seeking political power, English people will call that good economic progress and healthy living with their fellow human beings?”

That is the question we should now apply to ourselves. What happens when economic activity that appears beneficial in the short term gradually reduces the ability of indigenous people to participate in their own local economy? That is the issue behind my concern about the emergence of Chinese “Mom & Pop” shops in the South West —and, by extension, the wider Nigerian economy.

Let us examine some of the potential consequences. It can rob indigenous people of their entry point into entrepreneurship.

The first danger is the progressive loss of opportunities for indigenous people to participate in petty trading, distribution, buying and selling, importing and other small-scale commercial activities.

For millions of Nigerians, small-scale trading is not merely a business. It is the first rung on the economic ladder. A young person may start by selling a few products, expand into wholesale distribution, accumulate capital, employ others and eventually establish a larger enterprise.

But what happens when those entry-level opportunities become dominated by better-capitalised external operators?

The ladder disappears. And when the ladder disappears, an entire generation can be locked out of entrepreneurship. This is one of the central features of what I call The Indigenous People’s Displacement Economy (TIPDE).

Pressure on foreign exchange. There is also a foreign-exchange dimension that deserves serious examination.

A Nigerian importer who brings goods into the country uses foreign exchange to purchase those goods, but the subsequent proceeds and profits from domestic sales can circulate within the Nigerian economy. Where a foreign-owned trading operation imports goods and subsequently repatriates profits or capital abroad, there can be an additional foreign-exchange outflow.

The exact impact depends on the structure of the business, the extent of local sourcing, taxation, employment, reinvestment and profit repatriation. But in a country perpetually struggling with foreign-exchange constraints, the cumulative effect of import-and-repatriate business models cannot simply be ignored.

We cannot continually fight to preserve our foreign reserves on one side while creating channels through which foreign exchange leaves the country on the other. That is a contradiction that deserves policy attention.

Potential loss of Customs revenue and the crowding-out of local competitors.

The third concern is the potential loss of government revenue through customs under valuation, misclassification or other forms of improper import documentation. Where imported goods are under-invoiced, the government may collect less customs revenue than it should, while the importer potentially gains an artificial cost advantage over competitors who comply fully with their obligations.

If such practices occur, they should be established through proper customs investigations rather than assumption. But the policy concern goes beyond customs revenue. It is also about competitive displacement.

A well-capitalised operator can sometimes enter a market and use aggressive pricing, promotional incentives, high-volume purchasing or other commercial strategies that smaller indigenous competitors simply cannot match.

A recent case that deserves examination is Uber’s expansion of its airport transportation operations and its reported incentives to Uber drivers. Such incentives are legitimate commercial tools in themselves, but policymakers should examine their broader market implications where a large platform is able to deploy significant financial resources to attract drivers and potentially place non-Uber, locally operating transport providers under increasing competitive pressure.

The issue is not whether Uber has the right to compete. Of course it does, subject to Nigerian law and applicable regulations. The question is:

Do our competition and regulatory frameworks adequately protect a genuinely competitive market when a large, well-capitalised platform can deploy financial incentives at a scale that smaller indigenous operators cannot match?

This is the kind of question government must ask before market concentration becomes irreversible. Because once smaller operators have been driven out and the market has consolidated around a few powerful players, restoring genuine competition becomes far more difficult.

This principle extends well beyond Uber. It applies wherever a substantially better-capitalised external operator enters a market traditionally occupied by numerous smaller local businesses. The issue is not foreignness itself. The issue is unequal economic power and the failure to create a level playing field.

The long-term erosion of indigenous economic capacity.

Perhaps the greatest danger is the one we do not immediately see. A country can celebrate cheap goods, aggressive competition and increased consumer choice while simultaneously destroying the entrepreneurial capacity of its own citizens. That is the danger of looking only at today’s price instead of tomorrow’s productive capacity.

The debate should not be framed as a Chinese-versus-Nigerians, or Chinese-versus-Igbo, as demonstrated by the recent protests by Igbo traders over Chinese traders’ attempts to penetrate and dominate local markets might suggest. The real issue is the economic implications of allowing foreign businesses to compete directly with local traders by selling goods at significantly lower prices and, in the process, undercutting indigenous businesses.

In addition, the questions we should be asking are, if indigenous businesses continuously disappear, who will replace them? Who will accumulate the capital? Who will develop the distribution networks? Who will train the next generation? Who will become the manufacturers, wholesalers, exporters and investors of tomorrow?

If the answer increasingly becomes foreign capital, then Nigeria may be building an economy that grows commercially while becoming increasingly dependent economically. That is not the kind of economic sovereignty we should aspire to.

The objective should be to build an economic system in which Nigerians have the capital, institutional support and competitive capacity to participate meaningfully in their own economy. Government must change the financing equation.

This brings me to the fundamental issue: capital. It is easy to blame foreigners or other indigenes from a region for dominating the business environment in another different tribal region for taking advantage of opportunities, but we must also ask why those opportunities were available to foreigners and non-indigenes in the first place.

Why can an external entrepreneur sometimes mobilise substantial capital to enter a Nigerian or tribal-regional market while a Nigerian or tribal-regional entrepreneur with knowledge of that same market cannot obtain affordable financing?

Why should a Nigerian with local knowledge, local networks and local understanding be unable to compete because the financial system cannot provide the capital necessary to turn those advantages into a viable business? This is where government must intervene.

Nigeria needs innovative financing mechanisms designed around the realities of Nigerian entrepreneurs. This is the thinking behind my Business Funding & Assisted Management Model (RoBUF), 2007 Canadian Copyright of which objective is simply is not about throwing loans at people and hoping for repayment, but having in place a properly designed system that incorporates:

Affordable business financing; assisted management; structured monitoring; appropriate risk-sharing; business-development support; sensible default-management mechanisms; realistic recovery options; incentives for reinvestment; and mechanisms for scaling successful indigenous enterprises.

We do not need to blindly copy Western financing models whose assumptions may not correspond to Nigeria’s economic realities. Have our economists ever stopped to ask why the so-called Communist China has, for some time now, surpassed most Western capitalist countries—including the United States—in overall economic and industrial capacity?

We need solutions designed around our own environment, and this is the question Nigeria must answer: What kind of economy are we building? An economy in which Nigerians are empowered to become owners of businesses, productive assets and capital? Or an economy in which Nigerians increasingly become consumers, employees, tenants and intermediaries within markets controlled by people with greater access to capital?

That is the real question.

Foreign investment should be welcomed where it creates productive capacity, jobs, technology transfer, local supply chains and sustainable economic value.

But where commercial activity progressively displaces indigenous participation without corresponding mechanisms to build local capacity, government must pay attention and come up with policies that protect the financially weak entrepreneurs.

The objective of economic policy should not merely be to attract capital, it should be to build economic capacity among the people. It should be framed around a much more fundamental question: Are we building an economy that empowers Nigerians to participate in wealth creation, or one that progressively displaces them from the economic opportunities available on their own soil.

Ultimately, this debate is not about China.

It is not about the Igbo.

It is not about the Yoruba.

It is not about Uber.

It is about economic architecture.