Uber airways: Wealthy Nigerians are having pizzas delivered from the UK using British Airways, claims a Nigerian minister. (Reuters/Ciro De Luca)
A Nigerian minister claims that there are some wealthy citizens that have pizza delivered to them from London via British airways flights.
Audu Ogbeh, the minister of agriculture, made these comments before a senate committee in an attempt to illustrate how imports are harming local farmers and businesses. For some time now, citizens have taken to importing basic food items such as rice and tomato paste, because they think “it shows status, class, that they only eat imported things,” Ogbeh charged.
“It is a very annoying situation,” he added, “and we have to move a lot faster in cutting down some of these things.”
Ogbeh added: “Do you know, sir, that there are Nigerians who use their cellphones to import pizza from London? [They] buy in London, they bring it on British Airways in the morning to pick up at the airport.”
Twitter users from across the globe were less forgiving about Ogbeh’s comments with reactions ranging from disbelief to outright ridicule. Amara Nwankpa, a director at the Yar’Adua Foundation tweeted: “Dear@British_Airways, how come you didn’t tell us you run a pizza delivery service to Nigeria? Is there an app for this?”
The Nigerian Pizza Hut Twitter page seized an opportunity to market itself by posting a picture of a pizza delivery dog that can sniff out a delivery address.
Some users were not as impressed. There was a sentiment among some users that media, instead of focusing on the harm done by imports as highlighted by Ogbeh, chose to make the pizza delivery claim the crux of the matter. One user blasted media saying: “Now the media is carrying just a snippet of his conversation. The real issue was limiting Nigeria’s dependence on importation and promoting our local content. I hope we can push that out not just pizza and british airways delivery service.”