Unpopular side with Thomas Oti
Email: thomasoti@qed.ng
Mark Zuckerberg was in town and apparently CNN failed to acknowledge us. Do they even know who we are? The most vibrantly noisy people on Zuck’s Facebook pages! Do they know the amount of traffic we drive to Mark’s pages in noise per day that they have lumped us with Kenya to claim Mark visited ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’? Those guys have no respect.
Zuckerberg flew into Lagos practically unannounced and CNN did not acknowledge that. Zuck went to a local Nigeria techpreneur hub and CNN did not say anything about that either. He went to a coding boot camp for children and was over impressed. CNN was silent. He went to an amala joint and ate original iyan, eja dindin and efo riro and it was not newsworthy to CNN. He strolled freely on the streets of Yaba and was not kidnapped, ‘adultnapped’ or arrested by Police for wandering and CNN thought Naija was that sane to watch a $54billion dollar asset ‘stroke’ around the streets of Lagos just like that! He also jogged on the famous Ikoyi Bridge in broad daylight. CNN did not wonder how a bridge built for a mere $65m could withstand the weight of $54billion worth of jogging.
Let CNN know that Mark’s visit was primetime newsworthy even though he wasn’t kidnapped. Let them know that the fact that he did not get food poisoning from eating pounded yam and efo riro at White House does not mean they could not have found a negative angle to the story. For instance they could surely have attacked his lack of etiquette for using his hands to eat pounded yam! Surely, that is the most horrifying thing they have ever seen in this world and beyond!
But let’s leave CNN and its nay speaking unserious bunch of negative news peddlers aside. Truth be told, from a purely international news point of view, Zuck’s visit was boring and uneventful. So what if he inspired Silicon Valley to mark out where Nigeria was on the map and start asking themselves what did Mark see? He invests $24m in a Naija tech start-up called Andela. He sets up an office in Lagos. He then visits the country ever so casually to say whatsapp to his peeps here in Lagos and Abuja. Nothing new to report there. No big deal. But like I said, let’s leave the CNN jare. Who them epp?
Zuck’s visit was significant for us on all the levels the wonderful Nigerian social media and whatsapp armies have taken pains to elucidate ever so forcefully. Yes he visited us just as we were pronounced terminally ill. Yes he visited to check up on his investments in the country. Those Andela guys may be clean and legit but maybe Priscilla had been haranguing him to “Just go and check”. Wives have that power. $24m is no jokes.
And didn’t that doomed baby-faced PM, David Cameron, pronounce our country fantastically corrupt? If I was a woman and I was Priscolo, I would not have let the guy rest until he assured and re-assured me that Andela did not do a Prof Peller on them. Yes, his visit was inspirational and investment driven.
Yet, If Zuck could in the midst of Nigeria’s supposedly worst period of economic depression get up and fly in to hail us, surely there must be hope in the horizon; the storm is over, the rainbow is up. It’s just the big mountain of corruption and inept trial and error leaders that are befuddling our vision. Zuck isn’t on a jolly round the world in 90 days trip. He is going where the money is. He knows what’s up. He didn’t get rich by investing whimsically. Though he didn’t get rich by investing at all sha. But he’s had to learn to be a businessman and that is the all-important thing; leave no money to burn!
Mark’s trip to Nigeria is significant on another level: the ascendance of youth, technology, Nigerianess and the implications for Facebook growth and international expansionism ambitions. In short, Nigeria represents a very virile and ready market for Facebook. And actually, other international multinationals as well. Even if they be only portfolio investors. We may sit here and pretend to groan and complain about our lot while we do nothing about it. Our leaders may continue to steal while pretending to work for us and instead taking our common wealth abroad to enrich other economies.
The new business model that has emerged over the last few years continues to prove the saying right; build it and they will come. The ingredients of modern day business have by all means defied the space and time continuum. From your tiny corner of the world, you can reach space and do good business with aliens traversing the galaxy if you wanted. Your business is, like Glo says, illimitable.
But again, above and beyond all these, there is still plenty to mull over; those nagging wonderments that no answer can satisfy. Like why did John Kerry really come to Nigeria and go to the north only? Why did Mark Zuckerberg suddenly drop from the sky and show up in CCHub? I mean this is the age of social media! How did we all chief chatterers of social media miss the fact that the biggest fish of them all was coming? How did it not even leak small??? How on earth did Linda not break the gist???
What has Mark seen that the rest of us have not seen? What is unique about Nigeria at a time like this? Traveling to Nigeria would have cost him time, effort, money, diplomatic red tapes, etc. Yet he came. It would have been months and months of planning. I suspect the decision might have even been taken when he invested all that money in Andela. So there would have been quite a bit of careful planning that went into the process. He didn’t stop even after Nigeria was announced as officially in recession.
Did he appear at the Nigerian Embassy in America when he went to get his visa? Did he suffer the famous ignominy Nigerians and foreigners alike face when they go get their visa? Did he, in spite of all that, still come to this country of ours? Why? What is he seeing that we are not seeing? He is an astute businessman or he wouldn’t be worth so much. He definitely does not throw money away anyhow. What whiff of money can he perceive that catarrh has blocked our nose so we can’t perceive?
Zuck’s trip leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Since the visit, what has happened? Has there been any more inflows into the economy? And I don’t mean the landing and hangar costs.
What did the government make of the trip apart from taking selfies and asking him to help unclone Facebook accounts? What did he take away from CCHUB? Or from Andela? Or the little stops on his journey around Nigeria including on Ikoyi Bridge? (PS – Does anyone know the official name of that bridge? Calling it Lekki-Ikoyi Bridge is so stupidly unimaginative and dry).
We have an external debt of erm…how much again? $60billion. By the end of this year, Zuck would be able to pay up our debts if he so wishes! Mark wuz here. We have the selfies to prove it! And we also abused Ghana jollof and dissed his safari trip to Kenya. We’ve also made a lot of noise on the same social media channels that made him so rich. Thus making him richer. And ourselves poorer: #data.
Zuck wuz hia for sure. But from all indications, Nigeria and Nigerians failed to turn up.
