Nigeria currently sits pretty as the 20th
largest economy in the world going by purchasing power parity index, at least.
It is projected by PWC to be the 9th largest economy in 2050 a few billion
dollars behind Japan and Russia in 7th & 8th respectively. Even as the
engines of growth slowdown into a recession caused largely by a cocktail of
policy and political misdirections, trade in Nigeria in the 2nd quarter of 2016
grew by as much as 49%. Nigeria is a place to do business, because there are
over 180 Million potentials for success.

Both foreign investors and local businesses
doing business in Nigeria require a depth of local knowledge about the policy,
economic and political environment. Secondly, local knowledge must be valuable
by translating into viable business relations that help businesses achieve
goals, such as dealing with trigger-happy regulators or revenue officers.

I read over the past week a post by the
founder of Hitv, explaining the sad circumstances surrounding the unfortunate
collapse of the free to air satellite tv company. Of all the issues that led to
the collapse of Hitv, none was more striking as “the delay in obtaining the
loan needed to pay for the English Premiership TV rights” which came a day
after the rights had been sold, effectively killing the company. More on this
later.

I read somewhere that China is a compliance
rainforest, so also is Nigeria. Entering into a country fills businesses with a
lot of concern about the local partner to engage. The risks of getting it wrong
can be devastating, as we found from the Unaoil scandal. But there is no way of understating the
importance of local partners who understand the terrain. Even for local
businesses, the difference between a failed business venture and a successful
one usually turns on the knowledge of the terrain. One recent case supremely
illustrates this point.

Sometime in 2014, massive development began
in one of the choice locations in Nigeria, Falomo Ikoyi. The developers were
building a grand shopping mall in the very heart of Lagos, and they did not
seem to be sparing any expense. Vibrations from the foundation work
reverberated some hundred feet away in buildings close-by and a billboard just
outside displayed a picture of the state-of the art edifice. Shortly after May
2015, work ground to an abrupt halt; what had happened? There was a new
Sherriff in town, who had different ideas. 2015 was an election year, there was
going to be a new Governor and the guys who were spending millions on the
property might have saved all the investors the loss of the huge funds sunk
into the project if they had the presence of mind to consider all the
possibilities. A sound risk assessment should have involved an analysis of the
following:

1. political
risks of commencing such huge project a year into 2015 elections which had been
tagged as the most hotly contested in Nigeria in many decades

2. an analysis
of the consequences of victory by each contestant

3. the
ramifications should the opposition party win

In other countries this might be
unnecessary; government is a continuum, therefore a change of government should
have little or no bearing on already concluded contracts, and in any case there
must be available remedies in the event of infringement of an investor’s rights
(and indeed in Nigeria there are “remedies”). But the reality is that it is not
always a simple matter in Nigeria. A robust country-entry risk assessment must
consider all the preceding possibilities to avoid getting an investor in and
leaving them stranded in the courts.

This point is also further illustrated by
another interesting instance from Lagos. During the 2015 elections, one of the
campaign promises of one of the gubernatorial aspirants was that his
administration would discontinue a 30-year concession of the Lekki-Epe
expressway to a company known as Lekki Concession Company (LCC). LCC had
been awarded a 30year concession to manage and collect toll on the road in
order to recoup the (somewhat unbelievable) N50 billion it allegedly spent on
the “expansion” (emphasis on expansion) of the 29km road. LCC is clearly a
special purpose vehicle by a band of investors who had invested in the project.
Imagine the panic and concern among shareholders of the investor companies when
they learnt of the campaign promise of a major aspirant to discontinue the
concession. A sound risk officer would have identified the threat long before
it came mainstream, and suggested ways of managing the risks to minimise the
LCC’s exposure. In the LCC case, I learnt that certain steps were taken which
satisfied the investors, although fortunately, the favourable candidate won.

On the second point, a local partner must
go beyond reeling out country-entry requirements and post incorporation
obligations. Such a partner must be proactive. Hitv effectively went
underground because a loan came 24 hours late. Imagine a scenario where someone
in Hitv had a network of contacts that they leveraged to ensure all the bank’s
internal processes were seen to timelously? Perhaps we might have still had
Hitv around giving DStv a reason to be customer-friendly. In my experiences,
with respect to regulators, a business can be shut down with the attendant loss
of revenue because a local partner either did not know how to or whom to
engage.

As I write, a government project that has
arguably gulped billions in funds is lying abandoned in Illubirin, Lagos
because there is a new administration in power. Imagine if some banks
bankrolled such massive project? In Rivers State, the new administration has
abandoned a mono-rail project that gulped billions of state funds. Had
investors’ funds been involved what would have been their remedy?

A local partner must not just know the law
and the processes, he must know the terrain, understand how it works and where
to go to get things done. As with everything in business, great care must be
taken to select an ethical local partner to avoid a Unaoil type scandal.