Chairman of the Alliance for Economic Research and Ethics LTD/GTE, Dele Oye, has decried Nigeria’s ongoing spree of foreign investment and diplomatic trips as unstrategic, wasteful, ineffective and consistently failed to deliver measurable economic benefits despite heavy public spending.
Oye made the remarks in a policy document entitled ‘The Cultural Key: Why Nigerian Businesses and Government Delegations Fail Abroad – and How to Master Cross-Cultural Commerce’.
According to him, successive Nigerian delegations travel abroad with optimism, ceremonial ambition and large entourages, but return home with little to show beyond photographs, signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) and diplomatic handshakes.
He argued that many of the agreements rarely translate into actual investments or long-term partnerships, describing the pattern as “predictable and wasteful.”
“At Alliance for Economic Research and Ethics LTD/GTE, we have observed with growing concern the persistent pattern: Nigerian delegations travel abroad with little more than optimism and ceremonial ambition.
“The results are predictable handshake photographs with foreign officials that yield no memoranda of understanding; MOUs signed in glittering hotel ballrooms that collapse within months; investment ‘roadshows’ that consume hundreds of millions of naira and return with nothing but jet lag and duty-free shopping,” Oye noted.
