The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise has called for urgent policy attention on the growing presence of foreign nationals, particularly Chinese traders, in Nigeria’s retail and distributive trade sector.
The warning followed protests by auto spare parts traders at the Lagos International Trade Fair Complex over the alleged involvement of Chinese nationals in direct retail selling.
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What triggered the concern
CPPE Chief Executive Muda Yusuf, in a policy brief released on Sunday, said the distributive trade sector employs an estimated 27.5 per cent of Nigeria’s workforce, spanning textiles, ICT products, spare parts, tyres, plumbing materials and household goods.
The protesting traders told reporters they were not asking Chinese businesses to leave Nigeria, only to stop competing directly with them at the retail level around the market. CPPE was careful to separate this from Nigeria’s broader trade relationship with China, which remains a leading source of the country’s imports and industrial inputs.
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Where the line should sit
CPPE argued that concern is not about Chinese investment generally but about foreign suppliers and manufacturers moving downstream into retail segments where Nigerian SMEs already have substantial capacity. A distributor bringing in machinery or industrial inputs adds capacity Nigeria needs. The same distributor opening a retail counter beside a Nigerian trader is competing for a livelihood that sustains millions of households.
The organisation said expatriate quotas and business permits should facilitate skills that are genuinely scarce, not enable displacement of Nigerians from activities where domestic competence already exists.
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What CPPE wants done
The think tank called for a review of business permits, expatriate quotas and immigration approvals in the retail trade, alongside stronger coordination between immigration, investment, trade and labour authorities. It urged government to channel foreign investment upstream, into manufacturing, processing, logistics and export-oriented production, rather than into basic retail activity.
This is not a call for protectionism. It is a call for Nigeria to decide, sector by sector, where foreign capital builds capacity and where it simply displaces the entrepreneurs the economy depends on. For SMEs already contending with weak consumer spending and high financing costs, the outcome of that decision will shape how much room remains for them to compete in their own markets.
