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Inter-regional Economic Relations in the Nigerian Footwear Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

Scholars have very little information on inter-regional economic relations within African countries. This article focuses on patterns of inter-regional and socio-ethnic group migration and business relations in Nigeria,1 with special reference to entrepreneurs who make or deal in footwear. The material presented refers only to the two-year period prior to the coup d'état of January 1966.

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Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

Page 531 note 1 For quantitative estimates of inter-regional commodity flows, see Hay, A. M. and Smith, R. H. T., ‘Preliminary Estimates of Nigeria's Inter-regional Trade and Associated Money Flows’, in Nigerian Journal of Economic and Social Studies (Ibadan), VIII, 03 1966, pp. 935.Google Scholar

Page 531 note 2 Nigeria's, population in 1963, according to official census figures, was 55·7 million (Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1964 (Lagos, 1965), p. 12).Google Scholar

Page 531 note 3 Cf. Bohr, Kenneth A., ‘Investment Criteria for Manufacturing Industries in Underdeveloped Countries’, in Review of Economics and Statistics (Cambridge, Mass.), xxxvi, 2, 05 1954, pp. 157–66.Google Scholar

Page 531 note 4 See Nafziger, E. Wayne, ‘Nigerian Entrepreneurship: a study of indigenous businessmen in the footwear industry’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 05 1967),Google Scholar for details of sources, methods, and procedures of the study. Of the 90 trading firms, 30 were in the North, 21 in the East, ‘5 each in Lagos and the West, and 7 in the Mid-West. Of the 81 manufacturing firms, 36 were in the East, 18 in the North, 12 in the West, To in Lagos, and 5 in the Mid-West; two had ioo or more workers, seven had 25–99, 26 had 10–24, 20 had 6–9, and 26 had 1–5. Cf. Table I, below.

Page 532 note 1 LeVine, Robert A. and others, Dreams and Deeds: achievement motivatirm in Nigeria (Chicago, 1966), pp. 2537 and 92–4;Google ScholarColeman, James S., Nigeria: background to nationalism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1958), pp. 64 and 333–6Google Scholar; Ottenberg, Simon, ‘Ibo Receptivity to Change’, in Bascom, W. R. and Herskovits, M. J. (eds.), Continuity and Change in African Cultures (Chicago, 1958), pp. 130–43;Google Scholar and Ottenberg, Phoebe, ‘The Afikpo Ibo of Eastern Nigeria’, in Gibbs, James L. (ed.), Peoples of Africa (New York, 1965), pp. 139.Google Scholar

Page 533 note 1 Urban areas' may be defined as ‘all compact centres of over 10,000 inhabitants'; Buchanan, K. M. and Pugh, J. C., Land and People in Nigeria (London, 1965), p. 63.Google Scholar ‘Footwear Firms’ include economic units in which at least one person derives 50 per cent or more of his annual income from the making or repair of footwear. The estimates in this table are based mainly on the following 11 sources: Quantitative Information on the Footwear Industry’ (Lagos, Federal Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 1965);Google ScholarIndustrial Directory (Lagos, Federal Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 1964);Google ScholarEastern Nigeria Industrial Directory (Enugu, 1963);Google Scholar ‘Mid-Western Nigeria Industrial Survey’ (1964, unpublished); Northern Nigeria Industrial Directory (Kaduna, 1965);Google Scholar personal interview with the assistant trade officer in the Western Region, May 1966; Kano Industrial Directory (1964?); Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives (Lagos), 5 04 1965,Google Scholar for the list of footwear firms registered for excise tax purposes; Federal Ministry of Commerce and Industry for the registration of business names; Federal Ministry of Labour; and an unpublished supplement (prepared by the Federal Office of Statistics, 1965) to the Industrial Directory. All this information was checked against the author's field research and, among other useful sources, Kilby's, PeterDevelopment of Small Industry in Eastern Nigeria (Enugu, Eastern Region Ministry of Information, 1963).Google Scholar

Page 533 note 2 The workers engaged in a firm include working proprietors, paid employees, unpaid apprentices, and unpaid family workers.

Page 534 note 1 In addition to the sources cited for Table 1, the estimates of employment, net worth, and value of output are based on information supplied by persons working in the Northern Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Northern Nigeria Development Corporation, the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Kano, the Industrial Development Centres in Owerri and Zaria, the National Manpower Board, the Federal Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the Federal Office of Statistics, and the Eastern Region Fund for Agricultural and Industrial Development.

Page 534 note 2 This table refers only to firms with 25 or more workers engaged; estimates are based on the sources cited for Tables 1 and 2.

Page 535 note 1 Cf. Kilby, Peter, ‘African Labour Productivity Reconsidered’, in The Economic Journal (London), LXXI, 282, 06 1961, p. 283;Google Scholar and Harris, John R. and Rowe, Mary P., ‘Entrepreneurial Patterns in the Nigerian Sawmilling Industry’, in Nigerian Journal of Economic and Social Studies, VII, 1, 03 1966, pp. 87–8.Google Scholar

Page 536 note 1 Based on documents of the Fund for Agricultural and Industrial Development (the Eastern Region small loan board). Costs include implicit returns to all Mr A's own factor resources except capital.

Page 536 note 2 Even foreign firms in Nigeria, which as a group had been slow to Nigerianise on the production side, had virtually all recognised the necessity of appointing depot and agency managers who knew the language of the local buyer.

Page 536 note 3 See Bauer, P. T., West African Trade (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 61–2;Google Scholar and Bretton, Henry L., Power and Stability in Nigeria (New York, 1962), p. 89.Google Scholar

Page 536 note 4 At the levels of income of Nigerian merchants, liquidity above a bare minimum might be a luxury. In addition, the claims of the extended family might prevent the merchant from accumulating a margin of liquid capital for current transactions demands. See Nafziger, E. Wayne, ‘The Effect of the Nigerian Extended Family on Entrepreneurial Activity’, in Economic Development and Cultural Change (Chicago), forthcoming.Google Scholar

Page 536 note 5 Producers who could purchase supplies in large quantities could frequently economise by ordering materials direct from overseas firms. However, there was usually a time lag of at least two months between the order and receipt of the supplies. Also it was virtually impossible for a small Nigerian firm to procure credit from a foreign firm. Thus the average working capital of the firm needed to be high if the firm was to order supplies direct from overseas. Of course the problem of maintaining adequate liquidity could be very acute if the firm bought from foreign suppliers, and sold on credit.

Page 537 note 1 According to Mrs Katzin, an anthropologist who was studying the Onitsha open-air market, Ibos in Onitsha feared that discrimination against other ethnic groups would harm the reputation of this trade centre.

Page 537 note 2 See Uchendu, Victor C., The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria (New York, 1966), pp. 34 and 64–6;Google Scholar and Phoebe Ottenberg, op. cit. p. 6.

Page 538 note 1 The author made a deliberate attempt to find entrepreneurs of large businesses among minority groups irs a socio-ethnic group area. In addition to utilising sources of information already cited, a good way to locate producers with a yearly output exceeding £1,500 was by questioning footwear merchants in the open-air markets who bought from large-scale producers. These merchants knew of no wholesale sellers of footwear belonging to minority ethnic groups, other than the two mentioned above. John R. Harris, in a study of the sawmill, furniture, printing, rubber-processing, and garment-making industries, found only 5 out of sos entrepreneurs operating businesses outside the regions of their birth. See his ‘Industrial Entrepreneurship in Nigeria’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 08 1967).Google Scholar

Page 539 note 1 ‘Northernisation’ refers to the policy of reserving positions in the North for those who are members of northern socio-ethnic groups. The policy originated in response to the domination of a number of sectors in the North by the better-educated southerners.

Page 539 note 2 Firms with a net worth of less than £200 are here called ‘craft firms’, and their entrepreneurs ‘craftsmen’ or ‘craft entrepreneurs’.

Page 540 note 1 Regardless of where he lived, a member of a southern socio-ethnic group was a ‘Southerner’.

Page 540 note 2 See, for example, Kilby, Peter, ‘Nigerian Industry in the Northern Region: report to the United States Industrial Co-operation Administration’, 19 04 1961, p. 8;Google Scholar Robert A. LeVine, op. cit. pp. 12, 73–5, and 78–9; and Katzin, Margaret, ‘The Role of the Small Entrepreneur’, in Herskovits, Melville J. and Harwitz, Mitchell (eds.), Economic Transition in Africa (Evanston, 1964), p. 189.Google Scholar

Page 541 note 1 There is no reason to expect socio-cultural barriers to inter-tribal and inter-regional economic relations to be less significant in commodities other than footwear. Cf. Bauer, op. cit. pp. 39–40 and 389–90.

Page 541 note 2 The conflict is likely to have a permanent effect on the socio-ethnic composition of entrepreneurs in the North. Development economists have pointed to instances where rapid socio-economic change, including the rise of indigenous entrepreneurs, has resulted from external shocks to traditional societies. Cf. Rostow, W. W., The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 6 and 26–7.Google Scholar Perhaps the withdrawal of southern entrepreneurs from trade, transport, and crafts in the North and the accompanying disruption of the Northern economy may have provided the economic incentive and socio-psychological challenge for a rise in entrepreneurship among Hausas and other northerners. See ‘Exodus from the North’, in West Africa (London), 19 11 1966.Google Scholar