From Consumption to Production

Every generation of Nigerians can tell you where our cars came from. There was a time when the pride of every street was “Tokunbo” — what many of us called “Belgium” — fairly used cars shipped in from Europe. Then came the era of American cars, flown in and sold across the country; that trade is still alive today. But look around you now. Something new has arrived, and it has arrived like a tsunami: Chinese cars.

GAC. Changan. Chery. Geely. Jetour. Drive through Lagos or Abuja today and you will see them everywhere — on billboards, in showrooms, on the timelines of every car dealer you follow. Industry reports confirm what our eyes already tell us: brand-new Chinese vehicles are steadily taking over Nigeria’s new-car market, with banks and companies now buying them in fleets. And let me be honest with you — these cars are beautiful. They are attractive, feature-rich, and affordable. As a matter of fact, I have considered getting one myself very soon. I have no quarrel with China. I am even impressed by them — by how they train their people, organise themselves, and deliberately build their nation. It is admirable.

But admiration must not become blindness. This is how it works everywhere the wave lands: aggressive marketing, cheaper prices, often better performance — until the local competition is dead and the market is dominated. And when the market is dominated, every naira you spend is no longer building Nigeria. It is building China.

Here is what makes this moment painful: Nigeria is not an empty country. We have indigenous manufacturers — Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing (IVM) in Nnewi, Nord Automobiles in Lagos, and a number of local assembly plants. These are not fantasies; they are real factories employing real Nigerians. In fact, in the small formal new-vehicle market, Innoson is today the leading brand by sales. That is proof of what is possible.

But do not be deceived by that statistic. Our entire formal new-car market is a tiny fraction of the vehicles Nigerians actually buy, because the overwhelming majority of our money still flows out — to used imports and, increasingly, to the new Chinese wave. Our manufacturers operate far below capacity, starved of patronage, financing, and consistent policy support, in an economy where the naira’s weakness is itself the loudest evidence that we consume what we do not produce. The naira is struggling today for one simple reason: production in Nigeria is poor. A nation that consumes everything and produces little is a nation slowly bleeding to death — and no amount of prayer or propaganda changes that arithmetic.

Some will say, “That is just the free market.” Really? Then why do the most powerful free-market nations on earth refuse to practise what they preach to us? When affordable Chinese electric vehicles threatened American automakers, the United States did not write press statements — it raised tariffs on Chinese EVs from 25 per cent all the way to 100 per cent to protect its industry and its jobs. The European Union imposed countervailing duties of up to about 45 per cent on Chinese electric cars for the same reason. India shields its manufacturers. These nations understand something we pretend not to know: a domestic market is an inheritance, and serious governments guard their children’s inheritance.

Nigeria, meanwhile, leaves her own manufacturers to face the tsunami alone — and then wonders why the naira keeps drowning.

Now, to be accurate and fair: our government has, on paper, moved. In May 2025, the Federal Executive Council approved the “Nigeria First” policy, directing ministries, departments, and agencies to prioritise made-in-Nigeria goods in all public procurement. By 2026, a federal circular went further, directing that government bodies must buy domestically assembled vehicles, with foreign purchases prohibited except by special waiver. On paper, this is exactly the medicine I am prescribing.

So why am I still writing this essay? Because paper does not drive a convoy. Our President rides in an armoured Cadillac Escalade — the class of vehicle used by American presidents — alongside Mercedes-Maybachs and Lexus SUVs. His predecessor rode in Mercedes-Benz. Our governors glide past us in armoured Lexus LX SUVs worth hundreds of millions of naira each. Innoson is on the assembly line; Innoson is not in the convoy. Between the policy they signed and the cars they sit in, our leaders have told us which one they actually believe.

Let me explain the principle at the root of this failure, because it is not really about cars. It is about attachment. Human beings only commit to improving a system when the quality of their own lives is attached to the quality of that system — when the system’s decline is their decline, and the system’s rise is their rise. Break that attachment, and commitment dies. It is that simple.

Now examine our ruling class through that lens. Their hospitals are abroad. Their children’s schools are abroad. Their cars, their clothes, their holidays, their medical check-ups — almost nothing about the quality of their lives depends on whether Nigeria works. They build schools their children will never attend, commission hospitals they will never be treated in, and formulate policy over markets they never buy from. Why then would they fight for the Nigerian product, the Nigerian school, the Nigerian hospital? Their lives are simply not affected. This is a leadership that feeds on the wealth of a country whose fate it does not share — and a country cannot be built by people who have exempted themselves from it. As long as their lives are detached from the system, their commitment to that system will remain exactly what we have seen: zero.

I do not preach what I have not practised. I was once asked to take over a dying company — things were going badly, and the owner wanted someone to turn it around. Do you know the very first thing I did? Before strategy, before restructuring, I negotiated a deal that attached my own life to the fate of that company: if the company got worse, I would suffer for it personally; if it got better, I would enjoy it personally. That single decision changed everything, because from that day, every decline was my decline and every improvement was my improvement. I could not afford to be careless. And the company recovered.

That is the only orientation that produces performance — in a company, and in a country. Anything outside it produces what Nigeria has endured for decades: people of modest means becoming heads of state and governors, leaving office fabulously rich, while the people grow poorer and the country grows weaker. They rise; Nigeria falls. That is not leadership. That is extraction.

Some defenders will protest: “You cannot expect a president to use a Nigerian car. It might fail. It is a risk.” Listen carefully to that excuse, because it condemns the very people it is meant to defend. You are the one with the power to formulate policy and control the system that determines the quality of everything produced within it — and your defence is that the products of your own system are too risky for you? That is not an excuse; that is a confession. It is an admission that you have governed a system you would not trust with your own comfort, let alone your life.

If a leader cannot take the risk of subjecting his life and his family to the system he swore to improve, he should not seek office at all. Let leaders emerge who will drive the Nigerian car precisely so that when it fails, they feel it, and they fix it. That feedback loop — use it, feel it, improve it — is how every great product and every great nation has ever been built. Leaders who keep collecting our mandate while making excuses are not partners in progress. They are gaslighting us, and we must stop rewarding it.

So here is the standard I propose we hold — not as bitterness, but as a minimum qualification for anyone seeking our mandate:

• Their official cars must be made or assembled in Nigeria — Innoson, Nord, or any Nigerian plant — in full compliance with the Nigeria First policy they themselves approved.
• Their children must attend Nigerian schools, from primary to university.
• They and their families must use Nigerian hospitals — the same ones they commission with fanfare.
• They must drink the water, drive the roads, and consume the services they provide for the rest of us.

Whatever they provide for the Nigerian people is what they too must consume. The moment their comfort depends on our systems working, our systems will begin to work — not because they suddenly became saints, but because self-interest is the most reliable engine of commitment ever discovered. Any aspirant unwilling to accept this standard has disqualified himself. It is as simple as ABC. And come 2027, let us be clear about the kind of leader we must no longer encourage: the one whose idea of progress is moving from a Maybach to an Escalade — exchanging one foreign luxury for another while his country’s factories starve. The leader Nigeria needs is the one who will move from the Maybach to an Innoson, or any car made in Nigeria. That single movement — from foreign comfort to Nigerian commitment — will say more about his intentions than a thousand campaign speeches ever could.

I titled this essay “The Hope of Growing Nigeria” because, despite everything, I am hopeful. The same Nigeria that watches Chinese brands conquer her market is the Nigeria where an Nnewi trader built a car factory from spare parts, and where young engineers in Lagos assemble vehicles against every odd. The raw material of greatness is here. What is missing is the decision — the national decision to move from consumption to production, to protect our own the way America, Europe, China, and India protect theirs, and to accept only leaders whose lives are chained to the fate of the country they govern.

If we keep consuming without producing, the naira will keep dying, and this country will die with it. But if we build our own, buy our own, protect our own, and demand leaders who live inside the Nigeria they rule — then the naira has hope, the youth have hope, and Nigeria has hope. From consumption to production. That is the road. Let us take it, and let us take it together.