What my next door Neighbor has to say about the Alaba economy

Alaba International is a financial hub in the heart of my adopted home city, Lagos. It’s a capital within a capital, if you know what I mean. It is a typical market but then it is different in a way. Like China town, there is an ethnic undertone to its trappings. The brand of the Alaba economy is “international” in scope in that (1) products sold here are from all over the world: from Malaysia to Italy, India to South Africa and (2) that it doesn’t discriminate in what is sold: whether imitations or originals, “no-testing” or brand new. If it can be sold, then it can be gotten at Alaba, some would say. It is a crucial muscle in economic arm of the Ibo Nation.

My neighbor like his Ibo “brothers”* is a player in this economy. His story testifies to that social contract which admits new pupils into this exchange and grooms them into astute business men. At the risk of generalizing and being somewhat simplistic, I would make a stab at how it works:

A young boy leaves his village in the care of a relative who is a Lagos-based business man. His patron feeds, clothes and generally takes over his upkeep for the tenure of this apprenticeship. The young boy works at his patron’s store and learns the rubrics of the trade usually for years. When he has proven himself and learnt what he needs, his master (as his patron is referred to) would provide him with capital in the form of money, inventory or even a few of his clients to get his ward up and running in managing his own business.

This simple system is the life blood of the entrepreneurial success of this great market place. It is replicated in different parts of Nigeria wherever Ibos may be found. I remember visiting a village in the North which was roughly a street long. True to nature, an Ibo trader was there running a store. Where ever there are people who have got money to buy, there is an Ibo man to sell, people joke.

These businessmen have had their minds stewed in the fundamentals of business, from negotiation to international strategy. Small wonder they command vast empires of wealth while some MBAs in my country are still on the unemployment line.

There is a system of doing business that enables these businessmen circumvent the more formal sector with its bureaucracies, expenses and delays. In the place of these bottlenecks, Alaba economics accommodates entrepreneurs raising capital from money lenders or “brothers”; monetary transactions across international boundaries without banking routes; the presence of agents of their own ethnicity resident in foreign countries serving as some unofficial “Chambers of Commerce” to protect and facilitate their business interests there. Their capabilities are numerous. They have perfected an extralegal system that is as old as an empire. And it works.

In truth, the Alaba brand epitomizes that unique ability to adapt to change. Or what do you think?

*The word “brother” is a colloquial expression common among some Nigerian ethnicities. It could refer to friend, relative or even business partner.

What Iya oni robo taught me on my way to Lagos

She appeared to eye us cautiously – or was it a weariness I sensed? – but then it was fleeting. She was alive again, bracing herself and gathering her wares as she approached our station wagon. You see, we had stopped at a petrol station on our way to Lagos and while the driver hurried to get the tank filled, we chatted amongst ourselves or tried to keep awake in the back seat.

This woman (who I would go on to call Iya oni robo), displayed a small transparent plastic bucket half filled with what appeared to be miniature brownish balls which had coloured the water they were soaked in. This was robo, in its pristine form. “Factory-fresh”, so to speak. She shoved her display into my field of vision and launched into a spiel.

“Brother”, she said in the Yoruba dialect, “how many should I bring.” Here she broke into familiarity both with the use of the appellation and the tribal tongue that suggested I was one of her own. And as such would be more favorably disposed towards her as we had something in common. Also, she lightly ventured an assumption: that I had made a decision to buy her product. Apparently, the only question was how many.

“I will sell one to you for ten naira while two for fifteen naira”, she smiled, luring us to purchase a product we perhaps did not cared for. I think by offering us an apparently good deal, she would tip us from our indecision in her favour. She had formulated the perfect antidote to buyer’s remorse.

And then one person bought a few which she eagerly presented in a polythene bag. And then another passenger perhaps sensing a silence endorsement of the product in the previous purchase, offered money for some. A third grew curious and asked questions about what it was made from and she happily explained the production process. It is made from melonm she said - bringing the unfamiliar finished product into the context of its familiar raw material. Two more passengers volunteered that they had tried it and it was nice.

Whether its is actively displaying a product/service offering; knowing the customer; assuming the customer already has a need your product or service would sate; the buy-one, get-one-free, gimmick or the generation of word of mouth marketing, I realized that the fundamentals of selling remain the same. It could be an insurance salesman in a business suit or a small time trader who both produces and markets her product by the road side.

As the car pulled away, I smiled and waved at Iya oni robo, musing over the last five minutes of my practical MBA as I scribbled my next blog entry into my note pad.