SB Production

**Unlocking Nigeria’s Greatest Asset: Our Massive Market and the Call for Homegrown Entrepreneurship**

Nigeria is blessed with one of the most powerful economic advantages any nation can have: a population of over 200 million people, young, vibrant, and increasingly digitally connected. This is not just a demographic statistic — it is a massive, ready-made market that should be powering local businesses, innovations, and wealth creation. Yet, while many of our talented youths are “*Japaying*” — leaving in search of greener pastures abroad — entrepreneurs from China, India, and other nations are streaming *into* Nigeria, keenly eyeing the same opportunities we often overlook or undervalue.

This reality should wake us up.

*The Irony of the Exodus and the Influx*
Every week, thousands of Nigerians embark on journeys to Europe, America, Canada, and even Asia in pursuit of better opportunities. The brain drain is real, and the frustrations driving it — infrastructure deficits, policy inconsistencies, and economic pressures — are understandable. However, while we export human capital, others are importing themselves into our market. Chinese and Indian businesses are establishing factories, retail chains, tech collaborations, trading firms, and service outlets across Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Onitsha, and beyond. They see what many of us have stopped seeing clearly: **a youthful population hungry for goods, services, technology, education, healthcare, entertainment, and modern solutions.**

These foreign entrepreneurs are not coming because Nigeria is perfect. They are coming because the sheer size of our market offers scale that is hard to find elsewhere in Africa. A single successful product or service here can reach tens of millions of customers quickly.

*Language Is No Longer a Barrier —* Technology Has Removed It
I experienced this truth firsthand today. I sat with two friends from China. They speak little English, and I speak no Chinese. Yet our conversation was deep, productive, and genuinely fruitful. How? Through real-time mobile translators on our phones. We discussed potential collaborations, market insights, and business ideas without missing a beat.

This moment was more than a pleasant meeting — it was a powerful symbol of our time. **Language barriers that once limited global trade have been dismantled by technology.**
With Google Translate, WhatsApp, WeChat, and a host of AI-powered tools, any Nigerian entrepreneur can now negotiate deals with Chinese manufacturers, Indian tech partners, European investors, or American distributors directly from their bedroom or office in Nigeria.

The world is truly flat for those willing to engage it.

*A Call to Nigerian Youths:* Embrace the Entrepreneurial Spirit
To my fellow young Nigerians: the opportunities are not *only* abroad. They are right here — massive, untapped, and waiting for bold minds.

- **Local Market First**:
Build products and services that solve Nigerian problems at Nigerian prices. From affordable renewable energy, quality education tech (edtech), health solutions, agritech, fintech, e-commerce, to waste management and logistics — the needs are endless.
- **Global Collaboration**: Use the same tools that connected me with my Chinese friends. Source goods, form joint ventures, export Nigerian creativity (fashion, music, Nollywood content, software, processed foods) to the world.
- **Scale at Home**:
A business that captures even 1% of Nigeria’s population is already serving over 2 million people. That kind of domestic scale can fund expansion abroad.

We must shift the narrative from “Nigeria is hard, so I must leave” to “Nigeria is challenging *and* full of opportunity — let me build here while reaching the world.”

Entrepreneurship is not just about making money. It is about nation-building, job creation, and restoring dignity to our economy. Every successful local business reduces the pressure on our youths to migrate under difficult conditions.

*The Time Is Now*
The Chinese and Indians coming to Nigeria understand something fundamental: **markets reward those who show up and solve problems consistently.** We already have the people. We have improving digital infrastructure. We have a rising culture of innovation (from fintech unicorns to creative industries). What we need is a renewed mindset — one that sees home as a place of possibility, not just a launchpad to leave.

Let the story of my meeting with my Chinese friends be a motivation. No more excuses about language or distance. Pick up your phone, identify a real problem, build a solution, and go after both the Nigerian market and the global one.

**Opportunities abound at home just as they do abroad.** The question is: will we seize them, or will we continue watching others build empires on our soil while we search elsewhere?

Nigeria’s future will not be written by those who left. It will be shaped by those who stayed, innovated, collaborated, and built — boldly and relentlessly.

Let’s make full use of our huge market potentials. The giant is waking up. Be part of the awakening.

*What are you building today? Share your ideas and let’s encourage one another.*

*WARRIOR QUEENS: What African History Teaches Women About Taking Power, Not Waiting For It.*

History is full of women who never waited for permission. Long before "empowerment" became a hashtag, African women were leading armies, negotiating with empires, and refusing to be written out of their own stories. Their example isn't just inspiring — it's instructive. They didn't ask to be taken seriously. They made it impossible not to be.

*Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba* : The Queen Who Out-Maneuvered an Empire.

In the early 1600s, in what is now Angola, a princess named Nzinga watched the Portuguese empire tighten its grip on her homeland through war and the slave trade. When her brother died and the throne came to her, the Portuguese refused to recognize a woman as ruler and drove her out.

She didn't retreat into grievance. She built a new power base from the ground up — welcoming escaped slaves and exiled soldiers into her ranks, forming alliances with fierce warrior groups, and reorganizing her forces into a genuinely formidable army. By the early 1630s she had conquered the neighboring kingdom of Matamba and made it her new base of operations.
For roughly three decades, she personally led troops into battle and waged guerrilla warfare against the Portuguese, retreating when she had to and expanding when she could. She played European rivals — the Portuguese and the Dutch — against one another when it served her. At one famous negotiation, she refused to sit on the floor as custom dictated for African visitors and instead sat in a chair as an equal. After nearly twenty-five years of war, Portugal signed a peace treaty in 1656 that formally recognized her as queen of both Ndongo and Matamba.
She died in her eighties, undefeated in the way that mattered most: she was never made to disappear. She remains a lasting symbol across Africa of political skill, military brilliance, and resistance to oppression.

*Yaa Asantewaa* : The Queen Mother Who Shamed an Army Into Courage
Two centuries later and a continent away, in what is now Ghana, the British colonial governor made a fatal miscalculation. He demanded that the Ashanti hand over the Golden Stool — the sacred symbol believed to hold the soul of their nation — and even threatened to sit on it himself.
The male chiefs hesitated. Yaa Asantewaa, the Queen Mother of Ejisu, did not. She stood before the council and told them that if the men of Asante would not fight, the women would take their place, exchanging weapons for loincloths if the men lacked the courage to use them. Her words worked. The regional kings chose her as commander of the fighting force — the only time in Asante history a woman held that role.
What followed, the War of the Golden Stool of 1900, was the deadliest of all the Anglo-Ashanti wars, costing more lives on both sides than every previous conflict between them combined. The British ultimately prevailed militarily and exiled her to the Seychelles, where she died years later. But here's the detail worth sitting with: the Golden Stool itself, the thing the entire war was fought over, was hidden by the Ashanti and never captured. They lost the war. They kept their soul.

*The Agojie:* An Entire Army of Women, Feared by Every Neighbor They Had
If Nzinga and Yaa Asantewaa show what one determined woman can do, the Agojie of Dahomey show what happens when an entire society builds women into its structure of power, not around the edges of it.
For roughly two centuries, the West African kingdom of Dahomey — in present-day Benin — fielded an all-female military regiment that was, by most historical accounts, the only standing female army in the modern era. Europeans who encountered them started calling them "Amazons," but the women themselves used names that translate to "our mothers" or "the king's wives." By the mid-1800s, they numbered somewhere between one thousand and six thousand, making up roughly a third of Dahomey's entire army, and foreign observers who watched them fight were blunt about what they saw: visitors consistently rated the women soldiers as more effective and more courageous in combat than their male counterparts.

This wasn't a token gesture. The Agojie trained from girlhood in endurance, weapons, and hand-to-hand combat, and they fought divided into specialized units — riflewomen, archers, elephant hunters, and more, each regiment with its own uniform, symbols, and rituals. They didn't just fight. They held real influence in the kingdom's Grand Council, debating national policy alongside the king's other advisors, and at points in Dahomey's history they broke from the male military establishment entirely, pushing the kingdom toward peace and trade when the men wanted to press for war. Command, wealth, and status inside Dahomey ran through the Agojie, not around them.
It's worth being honest about the full picture: Dahomey was also a major participant in the slave trade, and the Agojie took part in raids and campaigns that inflicted real suffering on other peoples.

Their history isn't a clean fairy tale — no serious history ever is. But the core fact remains remarkable and true: for two hundred years, a kingdom looked at the question of who was capable of defending it, training its army, and shaping its policy, and answered, unhesitatingly, women.

When the French moved to colonize Dahomey in the 1890s, it was the Agojie who led the resistance on the front lines, fighting some of the fiercest engagements of the Franco-Dahomean Wars before the kingdom was finally overwhelmed. The last known surviving member of the Mino, a woman named Nawi who claimed to have fought the French in 1892, lived long enough to be interviewed by a historian in 1978 — a living thread connecting a twenty-first-century audience directly back to women who went to war a century and a half earlier.

*The Pattern Worth Learning*

Nzinga built her own kingdom when the existing order refused to crown her. Yaa Asantewaa told the male chiefs plainly that she'd lead the fight if they wouldn't, and then she did. And the Agojie are proof that this isn't only a story about rare, exceptional individuals — an entire nation built women permanently into the center of its military and political power, and for two centuries, that nation was formidable because of it.
That's the inheritance worth claiming today: not the specifics of 17th-century statecraft or 19th-century siege warfare, but the posture.

Rights that exist only on paper aren't really rights yet — they become real when people exercise them, insist on them, and refuse to shrink back down when it would be easier. The Agojie didn't wait for a seat at the council table; they trained until the kingdom couldn't function without them there. Asking is a starting point, not a strategy. Building undeniable capability, and then occupying the room like you belong in it.

You don't need an army. You need the same refusal to wait for permission that a princess in Ndongo, a queen mother in Ejisu, and thousands of women in Dahomey all shared — and the willingness to act on it.

- Seye Bankole

I was truly thrilled to attend the just concluded Food & Beverage West Africa Summit held on Victoria Island, Lagos. It was an inspiring and enriching experience, bringing together industry leaders, innovators, manufacturers, and stakeholders from across the globe.

One of the highlights of the summit was the opportunity to meet and network with giants of the food and beverage industry from different parts of the world. I had the pleasure of connecting with professionals and new friends from the Netherlands, Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka. These interactions provided valuable insights into global trends, emerging technologies, and innovative approaches to food production and distribution.

The summit reinforced a key truth: the path to sustainable growth and food security lies in collaboration, knowledge sharing, and strong international partnerships. As nations face increasing challenges in food production, supply chains, and sustainability, global networking platforms like this become even more important.

I commend the organizers for creating an environment that encouraged meaningful conversations, business connections, and the exchange of ideas that can shape the future of the food and beverage industry in Africa and beyond.

The future of food security is not a journey any nation can undertake alone—it is a collective effort that thrives on collaboration, innovation, and global partnerships.

:::

Step into the heart of Lagos at the National Museum Lagos, a captivating gateway to Nigeria's vibrant soul, where ancient whispers meet modern echoes in one unforgettable journey.
Tucked in the bustling Onikan area on Lagos Island, this iconic institution—founded in 1957 by British archaeologist Kenneth Murray—stands as a proud guardian of the nation's rich heritage.

Murray's vision was to collect, preserve, and celebrate Nigeria's extraordinary artistic and cultural treasures, and today, the museum delivers exactly that: a mesmerizing deep dive into the stories that shaped a great nation.

As you enter, the museum unfolds like a living tapestry of Nigerian creativity and resilience. Wander through galleries brimming with exquisite artifacts that tell tales of ingenuity, tradition, and power. Marvel at intricate Benin Bronzes—masterpieces of metalwork that showcase the technical brilliance of ancient kingdoms—alongside Nok terracotta figures dating back centuries, ceremonial masks, royal regalia, traditional sculptures, and ethnographic displays representing Nigeria's diverse ethnic groups. From the elegant carvings of the Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa to archaeological wonders and monoliths from the east, every piece invites you to connect with the depth of West African history and artistry. It's not just a museum; it's a vibrant celebration of identity, where you can almost hear the rhythms of ancestral drums and feel the spirit of generations past.

One of the most haunting and unforgettable highlights is the original bullet-riddled Mercedes-Benz in which Head of State General Murtala Ramat Muhammed rode on that fateful day in February 1976.

Preserved exactly as it was, with visible bullet holes serving as silent witnesses to a pivotal moment in Nigeria's history, this exhibit draws thousands of visitors monthly. It offers a raw, powerful reminder of the nation's turbulent yet resilient path—perfect for those who want to blend culture and Art.

Legacy...the ultimate for businesses.