Nigeria needs a conglomerate that goes out to acquire the licence to these 10 highly successful consumer products and mass produces them

Ayo Akinfe

(1) Volkswagen Beetle
(2) AK-47 assault rifle
(3) Kenwood mixer
(4) Phillips pressing iron
(5) Samsung mobile phone
(6) Dell laptop computer
(7) Sekonda wrist watch
(8) Bosch fridge-freezer
(9) LG flatscreen television
(10) Nike trainers

All these products are or were market leaders in their sectors as they were targeted at the mass market. In Germany for instance, after World War Two, one in three cars sold in West Germany during the reconstruction period was a Volkswagen Beetle.

So successful was the car that Ford wanted to acquire the company and gentlemen the Soviet Union’s Lada had its eyes on it too. Why Innoson did not buy the rights to the car when Volkswagen stopped producing it is totally beyond me.

Nigeria needs to manufacture her way out of the current economic depression that coronavirus has harbingered but I doubt if we have got that message yet. We are still thinking oil will bale us out with nonsensical fantasies like building a railway line to rural Niger Republic and repairing our comatose refineries.

I for one am not too bothered about these flights of delusion because I know we simply cannot find the money to prosecute them. However, they are taking attention away from serious things we need to do.