Nigeria, July 4 -- A close friend recently returned to Nigeria for the first time after fifteen years in the United Kingdom. Like many Nigerians in the diaspora, he had spent those years toiling, saving, and painstakingly constructing his dream home back in the homeland. Having finally completed the project, he decided it was time to return and add the finishing touches to the life he had imagined from afar.

One of his immediate priorities was furnishing the house. Naturally, he assumed he would patronise the same furniture stores that had dominated the city when he left. Those establishments were more than businesses. They were institutions, household names woven into the commercial fabric of the city.

To his utter astonishment, most o...