In Nigeria, we are not used to partnership. Everyone wants to do his or her own thing. Sure, our legal systems are extremely inadequate to protect people. The implication is that most hate to collaborate and partner with others. That is a mistake.
Many Nigerian banks went under during the consolidation program of Prof C. Soludo (former Central Bank of Nigeria governor) largely because some owners did not want to band together. Some companies in Nigeria could have been saved if the spirits of mergers and acquisition (M&A) are alive in the nation. Take a trip to Aba, Osogbo and Kano, many of those failed businesses could have been saved if the owners had come together to build a better single company. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, that does not happen.
Typically, Nigeria is not good with mergers & acquisitions. We like to be 100% in charge. That is bad. From Aba to Kano, Osogbo to Uyo, you would see guys killing visions purely because they do not want to TEAM up and build something greater.
Sure – I get it. We do not trust one another that much. So, if that is the case, there is no clear basis for partnership. Unfortunately, that is a lame excuse. Nigerian legal system is emerging and if you follow it properly, the risks are as what you have in most parts of the world. The problem is that the partnership was done in a beer parlor with no clear responsibilities, rules and defined modalities. Simply, it was created on chaos because it was not done professionally.
To thrive in business, especially in Africa, where our markets are extremely heterogeneous, requiring huge marginal costs for scaling, across disparate territories, you need to develop a mechanism to partner with others. With partnership, you would reduce the burden of massive operating capital, mitigate new market exposures, reduce operating risks and typically move faster.
Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 16 (Feb 10 – May 3, 2025) opens registrations; register today for early bird discounts.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations here.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and invest in Africa’s finest startups here.
Simply, you need to learn to partner to go further.
---
Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA (Feb 10 - May 3, 2025), and join Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe and our global faculty; click here.
Sometimes the challenge with would-be partners is complementarity, where you can have people with different skillsets and capabilities banding together. When you have people who do the same thing partnering or collaborating, it’s no longer partnership but duplication of roles.
For an enterprise to thrive, it must have solid skills or knowledge bases in three areas: product, finance and marketing. The way most businesses were set up here was accidental, so there’s a lot of deficiencies in both strategic and operational domains.
Collaboration and partnership don’t thrive in ignorance, and there are a lot of ignorant people creating and running businesses, and they keep crashing…