Tobenna Okoli, chief executive officer (CEO) of Solomon Hunt, has said Nigeria’s e-commerce sector is still in its infancy, despite growing at a rapid pace.
Despite plenty of action by various Nigerian e-commerce stakeholders, he expressed dissatisfaction with the current status of the industry.
“I am not so impressed with the growth of e-commerce a few years after. We are yet to see major disruptions. We are yet to see major paradigm shifts that would fundamentally change the conduct of business from the physical realm to the electronic realm in Nigeria,” Okoli told This Day.
He also expressed pessimism concerning the possibility of any of the e-commerce operators in Nigeria becoming a dominant force in the next five years.
He said: “While I must commend the tenacity of Nigerian e-business operators to survive in one of the harshest business operating environments known to man, it is hard to say any of them would emerge as power houses in five to ten years’ time.
“The reasons are simple. Their customer base is very limited. They are largely focused on middle-class customers based in Lagos and a few other cities like Abuja and Port Harcourt.”
Okoli said many Nigerian businesses were focused on replicating foreign e-commerce models rather than developing a system designed for Nigeria.
He added: “Nigeria is a very unique market and only intuitive systems would succeed here. I consider today’s Nigerian e-commerce practitioners pioneers who must take a bolder step that would create buzz and grab the headlines.”
