Mazi Ifeanyị

I'm Igbo before anything else || Visual Artist || Epicurean

[Mazi Ifeanyị @Dion_scar]

"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power. While the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must"

[Theo @GPhilcz]

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which”

[Davis Mattek @DavisMattek]

Kenneth Walker has radicalized me.

Running backs DO matter.

The Chiefs are absolutely night and day from last year with only one player changed. Undeniable.

[Ifechidere @Ifechideere]

Glad this conversation is up again.

Trade was a cope from the war. It was not the reason the eastern region was the fastest growing in the 1960s. Manufacturing was.

[Kansas City Chiefs @Chiefs]

It doesn't get much better than this.

@PatrickMahomes x @Kenneth_Walker9

[K @orbiterP]

4. We need to move away from that. I want this competition from the Chinese. It will be short-term pain but I believe our resilience will force us to learn how to collaborate. But you see this ịzụ afịa mentality? You see this Odogwu importer mindset? We must retire it....

[Ziyad Yakubu @Ziyad_yakubu]

You have made a very strong argument for protecting Nigerian manufacturing. You have not, however, made the same argument for protecting Nigerian middlemen.

If a Nigerian manufacturer is being driven out of business by heavily subsidized Chinese manufacturing, I am perfectly willing to have a serious conversation about tariffs, industrial policy, local production, access to finance, energy costs, infrastructure and the rest of it.

But that is not what this particular protest is about.

These are retailers. Many of them already source their goods from China, import them into Nigeria, and sell them to Nigerian consumers at a markup. The complaint is that Chinese manufacturers and distributors are increasingly bypassing that intermediary and selling directly to the Nigerian market at lower prices.

You have taken an argument about protecting domestic productive capacity and quietly converted it into an argument for protecting a particular class of domestic intermediaries.

Those are not the same thing.

Your American example actually makes this clearer. When the United States imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, it was protecting domestic automobile production from Chinese imports. Imagine instead that Washington said:

“Chinese companies cannot sell BYDs directly to American consumers, but American traders are free to import BYDs from China and sell them at whatever markup they want.”

Would we call that protecting American industry?

No. We would be protecting American car dealers.

And there is nothing inherently wrong with being a retailer or intermediary. Retailers provide real economic functions. They take inventory risk, distribute products, provide financing, warehousing and customer access. But the existence of those functions does not create a permanent entitlement to remain between a producer and the consumer.

Industries get disrupted. Constantly.

The Luddites are an obvious historical example. Mechanization destroyed particular forms of employment and production, even though the machines ultimately increased productivity. The horse-drawn carriage industry was displaced by the automobile. Entire businesses built around old technologies disappeared.

Nigeria has experienced the same thing. NITEL’s landline model was disrupted by mobile telecommunications. The arrival of GSM did not require the government to preserve the old telecommunications structure simply because Nigerians worked inside it.

We cannot build an economic philosophy around the idea that whenever a Nigerian’s existing profit margin is threatened, the government must intervene to preserve it.

That is the “any Nigerian benefit” mentality: if a Nigerian is making money from something, disrupting that activity is automatically treated as an attack on Nigeria.

It isn’t.

Sometimes a Nigerian business is genuinely productive and worth protecting from unfair competition. Sometimes a Nigerian business is an intermediary whose economic function is being made less valuable by technological, logistical or commercial change.

Those cases require different answers.

And your language of “violent displacement” is misleading. Markets have always displaced businesses. Our focus should not be whether somebody loses an existing source of income. It should be whether the new arrangement creates greater productive capacity, lower prices, better distribution and more value for Nigerians.

If Chinese manufacturers can produce something cheaply and sell it directly to Nigerian consumers, preventing that transaction merely so Nigerian retailers can preserve their markup does not automatically constitute industrial policy.

It may simply be protectionism for middlemen.

There is a much more important question Nigeria should be asking: why are Nigerian manufacturers unable to compete?

Why is electricity so expensive? Why is finance so expensive? Why is logistics so difficult? Why are industrial inputs so dependent on imports? Why is infrastructure inadequate?

Those are the problems that determine whether Nigeria develops productive capacity.

Protecting a retailer from being bypassed does not solve any of them.

In fact, it can make the problem worse. If we continually protect existing businesses from competition, we create an economy where survival depends less on becoming more productive and more on convincing the state to keep competitors away.

That is not industrialization.

So we can talk about Chinese subsidies, unfair trade, dumping, strategic industries and Nigerian manufacturing.

But let’s be precise about what we are protecting.

Protecting Nigerian production is one argument.

Protecting Nigerians from unfair competition is another.

Protecting Nigerian retailers simply because they currently sit between Chinese producers and Nigerian consumers is something else entirely.

And if your argument is that every industry that gets disrupted must be protected because people depend on it, then we would still be defending horse carts against automobiles.

[Tolu Grey 🧃 @Tolu__Grey]

China fear-mongering in an emerging market is very odd because your people are poor, very poor.

To frown at lower prices for them under the guise of long term thinking is not sound. It is "buy naija to grow the naira" of Buhari-era but with a different outfit. I reject this idea

[Oloma Juice 🍋 @islemonjuice]

Igwebuike Economics [S6]

We have a middleman problem in Igboland. The death of Igbo trade is quietly happening right now. Here is how we stop it. 🏗️👇

[Mazi Ifeanyị @Dion_scar]

Where do those idiotic retailers think their imports come from? Evolve or perish.

[Taryn's Sidehustler @shortqueenU]

Fun fact: Under Mahomes, most refs have a positive record for the Chiefs. This is because the Chiefs are a good football team.

[Bill Barnwell @billbarnwell]

Everyone (me included) all summer: The Chiefs are going to protect Patrick Mahomes and not have him run as often early in the year

Andy Reid: Speed option actually

[Kansas City Chiefs @Chiefs]

How we feelin', Chiefs Kingdom?

[SportsCenter @SportsCenter]

Kenneth Walker outgained the whole Broncos team in his Chiefs debut 😳

[NFL @NFL]

KENNETH WALKER 60-YARD TD

DENvsKC on ESPN
Stream on @NFLPlus

[Ari Meirov @MySportsUpdate]

Watch this: The #Chiefs just put Justin Fields in the backfield next to Patrick Mahomes, and the play call was a shovel pass to Kenneth Walker for a TD.

Andy Reid is in his bag. 🍿

[iJosh🃏 @KingiJosh]

There is no engine a mechanic is lifting that a gym bro will not lift.
Dudes literally go to the gym almost everyday to lift heavyweights and you think a mechanic will out-lift them?

[Mazi Ifeanyị @Dion_scar]

Umza are clearly the only ones with a goddamn clock in their offices

[Mark Essien @markessien]

How is it possible that Enugu air did 878 flights with only 5 planes? About half of Air Peace which has 24 planes? And more than Ibom Air which has 10 planes?

[Dr Aloy Chife @ChifeDr]

😆 😆 I think a lot of NdiIgbo have a problem acknowledging that at some point in our history the Igala ruled and dominated some parts of Igboland. Igala? No! No! No! We can’t accept that! Pride.

The truth is that Igbo history and Igala history are inextricably linked. Some of us from the Lower Niger were under the control of the Igala until the rise of the Aboh Kingdom. Igala rule shaped our history and culture. There is hardly any community which founding did not include the Igala. Ebu in Delta (not far from Asaba) is still Igala speaking. Idah was our London then 🤣 🤣.
This did not make us less Igbo.

The Igala Kingdom from the end of the Kwararafa Confederacy and its consolidation in Idah, was a very powerful Kingdom stretching far into Igboland and elsewhere.

But not to worry, here’s something for you to be proud of - Our own Aro Confederacy covered most of the SE and SS (Did you know Nteje defeated the Aro (I mean their Edda, Ohafia and Abam warriors to whom Ndi Aro (Umu Mazi) outsourced their fighting))? Also did you know that many towns in Anioma boasted Nteje founders?

The point is this: a society is shaped by different forces- language, culture, religion - over time. Ndi Igbo do not exist in a vacuum.

[Mazi Ifeanyị @Dion_scar]

😂😂

[TimithegoatTTG🎯 @sethgun1800]

Legal drinking age in Nigeria uno. Too much American film

[Matt Strickland @MattForVA]

“Next time a black woman kills their children, we gotta get out & support just like we did for the white girl, ladies.”

I definitely died a few years ago and I’m living in an alternate universe. No way this is real life.