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1/ Let us look at the truth about the Nigerian market - political reasons have created a huge population over-estimation. Nigeria is not 200m people, it is much closer to 100m. The biggest city, Lagos, is not 20m people, it's much closer to 12m.
2/ The educated market is much, much smaller. About 60% of the entire populace is rural and barely literate. These people speak diverse local languages - and they cannot read or write in those languages.
3/ Wealth is mostly driven by oil revenues - the vast majority is employed by Government (oil funded) or banks (manage oil money). Other sources of wealth tend to service the oil money.
4/ There is very little manufacturing because of an oil funded artificially high exchange rate. This makes the country non-competitive in terms of cost, and it is generally more attractive for businesses to stay in oil than manufacture.
5/ Because revenue is driven by trying to get a piece of the oil wealth, the entire government system is setup to 'share money'. This affects exports and imports, as there is a lot of extortion. There is very little taxation, as tax is not important to overall revenue.
6/ The educated parts of the country have flocked to two cities - Lagos and Abuja, and tend to work either in Government or in some oil servicing industry. Their wages are hence very high compared to the average wage of the country. This makes talent very expensive.
7/ On top of all that, you have deep-rooted tribal and religious mistrust, which prevents people from freely moving from one part of the country to another.
8/ To survive in such a fractured and competitive society, the general mindset is short-term. Get what you can today, because nobody knows tomorrow. This makes doing business deals difficult.
9/ To compound the problem, it's a hyper-capitalist society where money solves every problem. Police, court, fights: the richer person wins. There is no deep ideology driving the country, and no sense of unity.
10/ What kind of local market does this create? A small, shallow, rich market, and a broad, illiterate and poor market. Expensive distribution, low margins in a hyper-competitive field.
11/ Lack of investment in education also means that the literate market is not growing as fast as it should have. Lack of industries means that skills are not being developed. The best are also leaving any opportunity they can.
12/ What I have stated above is the way things are. Every state opens up opportunities. You have to consider the opportunity you are chasing - does it assume the above is not so? Or is designed to work in an environment that is as above?
