The SA Chamber of Business working group on Nigeria met in Johannesburg on Monday to promote the already considerable trade and investment links between South Africa and Nigeria.
Ajibola Olomola, a senior manager of auditors KPMG in Nigeria, addressed the meeting on the business environment in that country.
He said Nigeria had a reputation for corruption, but a new Anti-Corruption Act was in force, and he cautioned investors not to offer bribes to Nigerian officials.
”You must be ethical,” he said. Olomola said people doing business in Nigeria should expect bureaucratic delays, and he warned that infrastructure was not up
to South African standards, but he emphasised that ”Nigeria is a land of immense (business) opportunities”.
Hester Obisi of the international trade division of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) reinforced Olomola’s point, saying that MTN, providing cellular telephony in Nigeria, had ”exceeded their own business forecasts by 200%”.
Other South African companies doing business in Nigeria included Umgeni Water, SA Airways, Eskom, Spoornet, Portnet and Sasol.
Obisi said the DTI had a number of programmes underway to promote two-way trade and investment between the two countries. Sacob’s representative Marion Hummel said the Nigeria working group
was there as a forum for business to raise its concerns and to solve problems related to trade and investment.
Olomola said the Nigerian High Commission should be the starting point for trade enquiries. The DTI and Sacob could provide information, and a Nigerian delegate at the meeting mentioned Nigerian news media on the internet as another possible source.
Olomola cautioned that South Africans must ”do their own due diligence” to ensure that their Nigerian business partners were reputable and would not defraud them. – Sapa