Drastic times require unprecedented solutions so how about two or three Nigerian governors creating dinosaur parks and revolutionising the global leather and tourism industries

Ayo Akinfe 

[1] I am sure that like me, a lot of you are tired of hearing how Nigeria’s sums simply do not add up. We have an annual budget of $33bn but an annual infrastructural deficit of $100bn, so something has to give

 
[2] In this post-coronavirus era, investors remain weary, so something drastic simply needs to happen. Basically Nigeria needs to get hit with an economic meteorite that will change her dynamics forever 

[3] How about two or three state governors coming together to create a Jurassic Garden and mass-produce dinosaurs. Within a year, the size of Nigeria’s economy would balloon to about $3trn if we pulled this off

[4] It is actually possible as a team of researchers recently found what seems to be DNA in a 125 million year-old dinosaur fossil. Alida Bailleul, a palaeontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and her colleagues found the biomolecules in a portion of cartilage from a Caudipteryx specimen

[5] What this means is that we now have the DNA to artificially manufacture dinosaurs.  This peacock-sized theropod dinosaur whose DNA was discovered, inhabited what is now northeast China and is one of the oldest species of dinosaurs with feathers discovered so far

[6] Everything points to the fact that we have the technology to clone dinosaurs in a laboratory. I want to now see two state governors open say 20,000sq km Jurassic Parks each to tap into the commercial opportunities this would offer 

[7] First of all, just imagine the way we would radically alter the global leather market. About 95% of global leather products would come from Nigeria 

[8] We would open factories on every street corner where we currently have churches and mosques to manufacture dinosaur shoes, wallets, bags, car seats, belts, suitcases, etc 

[9] More importantly, Nigeria would account for over half of the global tourist trade with such a bold initiative. Every hotel, restaurant, railway, etc chain would pour money into Nigeria to develop the infrastructure 

[10] If we want to grow our gross domestic product from the current paltry $375bn to $3trn within a year, from what I can see, dinosaurs is the only way to do it. Imagine Oyo State had a live colony of T-Rex’s. If it did, we would never know poverty in Nigeria again