by Willy Okonji, Lagos
Nigerian business leaders and economists have called on the Federal Government to bar foreign nationals, particularly Chinese traders, from last-mile retail operations, warning that their unchecked expansion into local markets could cripple small businesses that anchor the economy.
The call follows a protest by traders at the Lagos Trade Fair Complex along the Lagos-Badagry Expressway last week, where demonstrators accused Chinese nationals of moving beyond wholesale trading into direct retail sales to Nigerian consumers — a shift they say gives foreign vendors an unfair pricing edge through direct links to manufacturers and suppliers in China.
President of the Association of Small Business Owners of Nigeria, Dr Femi Egbesola, said government must not sacrifice local enterprise for the sake of trade liberalisation. “Are we going to support foreigners at the expense of our own Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, our own business owners? That shouldn’t be,” he said, insisting that “retail to the last mile should not be part of what foreigners should be engaged in.” He further accused many Chinese traders of bypassing regulatory requirements such as state-issued business permits, and cautioned that inaction could wipe out SMEs, which he said generate half of the country’s GDP and remain its largest job creators.
Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, Dr Muda Yusuf, argued that Nigeria has sufficient capacity in retail trading and should reserve the space for its citizens and, at most, other Africans. He likened the situation to a manufacturer competing with its own distributors, saying it was “not fair” and would “drive them out of their business,” describing trading as the country’s largest employer after agriculture.
Not all stakeholders backed a ban. President of the Nigeria-China Investment Club, Dr Chidi Uleli, said the trend reflects an increasingly globalised world and urged traders to see the situation as an opportunity rather than a threat. He noted that over 40 per cent of Nigeria’s imports now come from China and pointed to South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand as economies that thrived by clustering into cooperative production rather than resisting competition. He urged traders to pool resources into cottage industries, dismissing poor power supply as an excuse given China’s investment in renewable energy.
The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry called for dialogue over street protests. LCCI President Leye Kupoluyi said the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission should intervene to prevent market monopolisation, adding that the chamber was ready to mediate given its members among the affected traders.
Economists offered a more structural diagnosis. Director of the African Retail Academy at Lagos Business School, Prof Uchenna Uzo, urged market associations to negotiate directly with manufacturers rather than allow disputes to spill into the streets, while noting Nigeria’s lack of a national retail policy framework as the deeper problem requiring urgent attention.
Director of the Lagos Business School Public Sector Initiative, Prof Franklin Ngwu, said the traders’ fears were valid but tied the real problem to Nigeria’s business environment — citing high borrowing costs, unreliable power supply and regulatory bottlenecks that leave local manufacturers uncompetitive against Chinese rivals who enjoy single-digit interest rates and stronger infrastructure. He warned that Nigeria’s estimated 14 million MSMEs could be “significantly impacted and possibly wiped out” if the trend continues, and called for government-backed industrial clusters, cheaper credit and improved infrastructure to boost local competitiveness.
