By Tony Eluemunor

It is already game over for the South African company called “Game”. The store’s branch at the Jabi Lake Mall, Abuja, appeared almost totally empty by Wednesday two weeks ago. Only a few people moved around the vast store. They seemed like vultures picking clean the bones of a fallen animal.

The company is exiting Nigeria, and that made my heart sank. I got to know of the store only a few months ago when I needed to buy an “airbed” and got it only on the usually congested Apo Mechanic Village road side. But just a few days later, the inflatable mattress began to leak. I bought another and reaped the same experience; the mattresses were defective.

Following someone’s tip, I visited the Game store. It was well-stocked. Objects of little value struggled for space with computers, air mattresses, all sorts of sports equipment, emergency pumps for your car tires and the like. It stocked as much as possible under its roof. I looked around, reading all the advert materials that were everywhere; the store boasted that if you could find any of its goods priced cheaper in another store, it would match that price or even beat it for you. Yes, I got a good quality air mattress! And at a low price, too.

So, now you have got the point; It was a low-end store. And that is exactly what Nigerians need in these hard times. And now, that store is just another statistic in the history of the foreign businesses that came to Nigeria … only to bite the dust.

On this last visit, I looked around and tried to focus on the faces of the Nigerian workers that were conducting the funeral service of the company that once placed food on their tables. The store had five outlets – two in Lagos, one each in Abuja, Enugu and Kano. About a hundred workers manned the Abuja store. So, some five hundred Nigerians have lost their jobs at the worst of times; the Christmas season.

I stood in one corner of the shop and remembered that I had come there, this time, to buy just badminton racquets. That day, Mr. Joe Obi, had engaged me in a lengthy phone discussion, advising me to pick up a sport that would help place my body and mind on the road to recovery; from the tragedy that befell me last October.

Mr. Obi, a friend and classmate from St. Anthony’s College, Ubulu-Ukwu, in the 1970s, has remained a brother. He was right there for me when a sunset at noon eclipsed the life of my Soulmate. He advised that I take to jogging, to clear some of the cobwebs in my mind and soul and regain my health after the vicissitudes that buffeted me as I cared for the sick who was at the same time a beloved one, for almost a year.  Your columnist decided to master a new sport; badminton. That was why I visited that store at the Jabi Lake Mall, Abuja, only to see its grave (figuratively, of course) being covered. Obi had asked me to clock myself and run a mile in 12 minutes. I knew I needed to be in shape before taking to the road … or I could collapse.

I thought of Nigeria where things keep getting worse, a country on an economic decline since 1966 whose leaders have been tropical gangsters.  No leader seeded economic growth, nursing it to fruition.

None, too, has addressed economic inequality. No Nigerian leader has addressed the question of how to make the society fairer to the poor.

There are no social safety nets for the down and out who, by no fault of his, suddenly finds himself out of work. He and his children cannot go to any hospital and qualify for free treatment just because they are poor. There are no shelters for the homeless and no soup kitchens for the hungry.  Nigeria is wicked; you fall is where you lie!

South Africa’s Massmart Holdings Limited, the store’s mother company, the second-largest distributor of consumer goods in Africa has decided to close all its 14 general merchandise stores in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. It didn’t plan for a stock clearance sale.

Its Managing Director had said months earlier: “We’ve commenced a formal sales process, we’re currently in discussions with potential purchasers to take on those stores,”. Such discussions failed in Nigeria. So, for Nigeria’s poor, poverty’s lash has worsened as one of the shops helping to keep prices down has just kissed the dust. Once, it was Dunlop the tire company that closed shop, once it was one textile mill after another that shut down, once even some airlines left Nigeria. Soon, that any foreign concern has remained, would become newsworthy.