There is tension in Nigeria’s retail industry over the impending entry of Walmart Incorporated, the global retail giant.
Established retailers such as Shoprite, Spar, Park n Shop; and informal trading publics went into panic immediately Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, welcomed the American firm to Nigeria’s most populous and richest state.
Reliable sources said retailers will band together to organise resistance through open letters and protests the moment it is certain that Walmart will surely come.
For now, several retail groups believe that its entry is a speculation. However, investigation confirmed that the Lagos State government has concluded plans to offer Walmart a place in Ikeja.
Nigeria’s retail market has experienced unprecedented patronage since Shop Rite, a retailer based in South Africa, arrived Lagos in 2002.
The industry has since witnessed the entry of Spar, Mr. Price, and many others.
But the Federation of Informal Workers’ Organisations of Nigeria (FIWON) has written an open letter to President Muhammadu Buhari and Ambode to signpost what to expect in the case of Walmart.
The letter, signed by FIWON General Secretary, Gbenga Komolafe, said its entry should have excited Nigerians at the time the country is shopping for foreign direct investment to boost employment but this move would cause more harm than good.
“Ordinarily, such a visit as this should excite every Nigerian as it suggests that Nigeria’s clamour for foreign direct investments with accompanying technology transfer, job creation and multiple value added, is receiving a welcome boost.
“It is no surprise therefore that Ambode readily welcomed the Walmart executives while pledging his commitment to create ‘an enabling environment’ for the global retail company because ‘the presence of the brand in Lagos will go a long way not only to create jobs for teeming youths, but also to boost the economy of the state.”
FIWON appealed to the government to stop the plan by Walmart “as we are convinced that the corporation portends serious threats and dangers that, on the whole will negate the optimistic expectations of Ambode.
“We are concerned because millions of retail businesses, including street and market vendors, some of whom happen to be our members, face the threat of being displaced from business by this global behemoth ….
“Millions of jobs have been lost in Nigeria in the last two decades as a result of Nigeria’s extreme open market policy which has turned the country into a dumping ground of, very often, fake, sub-substandard goods from all over the world especially, in recent years, China.
“Given Nigeria’s well known infrastructural deficiencies, Nigerian manufactured goods stood no chance as hundreds of factories closed down, rendering millions of Nigerians jobless or with low paying work in the informal sectors of the economy.”
FIWON pointed out that, in a city like Lagos, Nigeria’s most industrialised enclave, over 80 per cent of the working population scrape subsistence in the informal economy, a significant percentage of this in retail trade in neighbourhoods and communities.
“Walmart, renowned for its dismal record of systematically easing out small time retailers in communities because of its extremely low wage, undercutting low pricing policy which is made possible by its slave camp manufacturing plants in South East Asia, will easily uproot local retailer and neighbourhood markets in Lagos.
“We are sure of this outcome because of Walmart’s antecedent from its home country, the United States of America, and also across so many other countries it operates in.
“Studies after studies have shown that while Walmart offers some low paying jobs, it actually uproots several more people from their retail business, than it offers in its poverty wage jobs.”
