Africa: The Nigerian Millionaires

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Bayo Braithwaite, 36, one of Nigeria's younger businessmen, left a British insurance company to found a firm that would write life insurance on Nigerians which the British underwriters avoided. So successful has Braithwaite been that his African Alliance Insurance Co Ltd occupies a six-story Lagos home office and has 300 bush-beating agents. Braithwaite lives in an elegant house in suburban Ikoyi, where glass and concrete are deliberately intermixed with African folk art to prove that "the two need never clash."

So, it is, too, with Nigerian business. The Nigerians feel that they and their onetime white masters need never clash. "The time is coming," says Timothy Udutola, "when we will produce more than we can consume and we will have to look outside Nigeria for markets" Against that time, Nigeria is seeking joint ventures in Europe and the U.S., has also concluded negotiations for eventual associate membership in the European Common Market. Already it exports more to the Market than to its old master, Britain.