By Chidi Iketuonye
Hope is a universal commodity traded by all, for either individual or collective benefit. It is actually an asset class in itself but like every other asset, it can either be put to use or wasted, and prodigiously at that. Hope heralds every new year after the reverses and vicissitudes of the past year, and is captured in loud bangs of excitement, surfeit and spiritual ecstasy, in that religious order, and as yours sincerely returned to Lagos with co-travelers at the turn of the new year, the air was thick with hope and a tinge of anxiety. For some, the outlook regarding the year ahead was optimistic, while for others, there was apprehension and a feeling of deja vu, a nagging fear that the monsters of failure, lack, and shame would return to prey upon their days again.
Hope is not just personal but also transactional in Lagos. Large business and consumer loans are procured upon it as the major collateral. Quite a rugged few have bought cars and even houses based on the hope of future earnings or windfall. In fact, before the arrival of that Sahellian prince at the central bank, the Nigerian banking system was an intercontinental bastion of transactional hope. This is not too different from the practice in other credit based economies, just that there is more bombast and unnerving daring to the Nigerian proposition. What is also peculiar about the Lagos end is the insufficiency or near absence of guarantees. In these cases, both the seller and buyer, lender and borrower transact with a formidable dose of hope that the buyer or borrower will eventually make good on his obligations, sometime with extended periods of grace, but then we know that grace is the mother of all hope for without grace we are all most forlorn and miserable.
Lagos is also a city everyone comes to with loads of hope, despite the paucity of their luggage. From the stripling village lad to the young and impressionable undergraduate with a knapsack, all come to this city with big dreams. Whether it is the sleek young professional or the soft spoken spiritualist with a clairvoyant gift, all come with great expectations and amazingly, these expectations flourish into fruits, sometimes in rather surprising ways.
Hope is also entrepreneurial in this city. Take Chike, self-styled, and actually not so self-made CEO and his band of merry men – so merry that they bought into his vision of a pan African corporate giant to the extent that they worked eight months without pay, before the more restless amongst them started asking questions. Any skeptical mind would question the value of the kind of hope that led impressionable young men and women to be so hard done by, but such judgements tend to overlook the collateral benefits of experience, character and capacity building acquired during such largely unremunerated stint. There is also the consideration that some of the employees gained some leverage from the exposure which facilitated their exodus to better jobs elsewhere. That is the thing about hope. Sometimes it is like a hazy door that leads into another bigger door. There is also the fact that the promoter himself also benefits largely from his own dose of hope.
Bisi just came out of school and after hunting for the ideal job which remained out of reach, she volunteered to work as salesperson to a real estate company in Lagos. Her job description was to keep making cold calls until a buyer was found for the high end properties on offer by the company. Now on both good and great days, Bisi has never seen a cheque in six digits before. But every day she kept reaching out to contacts who were expected to part with tens and hundreds of millions in order to close a deal. Yet Bisi persisted each day, sometimes out rightly mocked and other times humorously patronized with scant attention. Hers was another level of hope at work, until one evening a call comes in from a forgotten contact asking for an inspection. Things happen rapidly and then the deal is closed. The contact introduces another buyer who equally closes in record time. Not only does Bisi earn a large commission but her company is so pleased by the sales that she is given a car. This is one of such instances where people walk into a door of fortune by just believing enough to show up.
Yet hope in itself is not a strategy for success. It serves as fuel for more efforts but it is not enough to just hope for the best whilst one continues in the same state of rest, to borrow a term from Physics. And so each day the number of people flocking into Lagos and other major cities increases with most of them hoping to strike it big in the city. However, the model is no longer sustainable. The dependence on a rent economy has taken its toll on our Gross Domestic Product. Manufacturing has dwindled, in some areas it has collapsed. There are hardly major investments across sectors these days as investors become more averse to the risk of investing in an unpredictable business environment. There needs to be more centrally coordinated and targeted measures to open up the economy of our cities and states. We could start by figuring out our exact population and demography devoid of political intrigue. But until then Lagos, as a simulacrum of Nigeria, still remains a city of dreams and anything is still possible.