Shocking Revelations about Nigeria and Nigerians

'When mankind finally gets to Mars, they'll find a Nigerian already there, cutting a deal.'

                                    Ateh Jewel

Nigerians are special people, and interesting too. We are just different from others. Our outlook on life is different. Our behaviours command attention. We just cannot be ignored wherever we find ourselves, whether for good or bad. Recently, I read an article by Tatler – a British glossy magazine which focuses on fashion, lifestyle and coverage of celebrities and politics – titled, The Nigerians Have Arrived. The article, written by David Jenkins, profiled the lives of rich young Nigerians living in London. Some of the revelations in the article were interesting and some were alarming. So I decided to glean them and share them on this page. Some facts about Nigeria that I didn’t know were also disclosed in the article. This post thus contains facts about Nigerians generally, Nigeria and rich young Nigerians, especially those living in London. I hope you find these revelations informative.

These are the revelations/facts:

• Nigerians collect PhDs like confetti and are intensely entrepreneurial (We all know that one, abi?).
• Nigeria has gone from being dubbed the happiest society in the world in 2003 by New Scientist to being called the most stressed-out society on earth in 2013 by Bloomberg.
• £250bn of oil revenues have been stolen or misspent since independence in 1960.
• 70 per cent of people living in Nigeria - sixty-two per cent of whom are under 25 – live on less than £1.25 a day.
• Nigerians are the sixth-highest foreign spenders in the UK, racking up an average £628 in each shop, four times what the average British shopper coughs up.
• Harrods, a high-class store located in London, is looking for Yoruba-speaking staff.
• Western retailers, like Zegna, Boss, MAC and L'Oréal, are moving into Nigeria.
• Nigerians account for 46.3 per cent of total African sales in London.
• Nigerians are investing £250m in British property every year and spend £300m annually at British universities and schools.
• A Nigerian paid £100m for four flats in One Hyde Park.
• For most rich young Nigerians living in London, every day is a champagne day.
• A Nigerian singer, marked his 24th birthday in London with what was reported to be a £1.2m diamond-encrusted bottle of Taste of Diamonds champagne bought for him by Liam Payne of One Direction.
• Nigeria is the second fastest-growing champagne market after France.
• Total champagne consumption reached 752,879 bottles in 2011 and the country is spending around 41.41bn naira (£159m) on the drink annually.
• Moët Rosé is now the favourite champagne of Nigerians.
• A particular Nigerian champagne war in an American club ended with the winner spending £1.1m.
• Once, some Nigerians sent another Nigerian at a different table a bottle of champagne, and he sent 20 bottles back.
• More than 140,000 Nigerians come to London annually.
• The cost of first-class tickets from Lagos to London is twice the cost from Accra to London, though the distance is almost the same.
• A Nigerian gave himself a £28m jet in April 2010, as a 53rd birthday present.
• Land on Banana Island in Lagos is as expensive as any on earth.
• There's a market for expensive cars in Nigeria and Porsche has opened up in the country.
• A Nigerian has 133 ponies and owns a private polo facility in Delta State, Nigeria.
• A former governor in Nigeria paid £2.2m in cash for his house in Hampstead when his official salary was £3,700 a year.

Can you see that Nigerians are special? We are just different. Or how on earth does one explain how most rich Nigerians spend money? It appears our propensity for vanity and narcissism can never be rivaled by other human beings. With such reports as this, do we expect many honest hardworking Nigerians who are still battling to get free from the clutches of poverty and lack to just sit by watching and hoping that things will be better? In a country where more than half live in poverty, can the stupendously rich live in peace and safety with the way they flaunt their wealth? Won’t many be tempted to want to become rich at all cost? And what does a ‘get rich at all cost’ mentality bode for a nation? Please if you have answers to my posers, I will be delighted to hear from you.