To ordinary Nigerians hustling on the street who hardly have access to the internet, Black Friday is not a thing.

Why it’s a thing to the rest of us is what beats us! To begin with, Black Friday is the day which follows Thanksgiving Day, a celebration peculiar to the United States. For the past 84 years, Black Friday is regarded as the official opening of the Christmas shopping season. Over the years, countries like the United Kingdom caught the bug and joined in the American shopping frenzy.

High street retailers take massive advantage of this day cashing in while shoppers go on a bargain hunting spree, mostly using the day as an opportunity to fulfill the expectations on their wish lists. Nobody loses at the end of Black Friday. Except for online retail sites who crash under the weight of large and unprecedented visits from shoppers.

The best Black Friday deals are usually on mobile phones, technology and household items. As for fashion items, the discount are not usually significant. Like a Zara duffle coat with faux fur hood advertised this Black Friday went from 129 pounds to 103 pounds. Not a lot of difference and definitely not worth the struggle and stampede that trails in-store Black Friday sales in these countries.

Just look at these ones:

Coming back home to Nigeria, we see our major online retail sites preparing customers for the big sales day. Meanwhile, there is no Thanksgiving Day celebration that precedes the shopping occasion and Christmas shoppings afterwards are not really a thing, except among the elites.

So why Black Friday? A few are of the opinion that it’s a culture that got dragged into our society to the famous IJGBs (foreign returnees), since we’re now used to putting all these sorts of blame on them. However way it came, Black Friday has taken root in Nigeria and it gets bigger with each passing year.

So far since the beginning of the day, we’re yet to record any major local online retail site experiencing a crash, whereas this was the case in the last two years. This suggests two things, Nigeria’s retail industry is ready to host frenzy shopping and that’s good stuff. Or the recession has bitten so hard and Nigerians are not bothered to even shop; or better put, cannot afford to shop.

Nigerians on Twitter are hardly sharing any stories of deals and bargains, no one is bragging about profitable purchases. We do not see retailers coming back post-Black Friday to count their gains. And the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Investment? Well, they’re most likely not concerned about Black Friday.

It’s why we ask, is this a tradition we are ready to adopt in Nigeria? Is this another pointless endeavour just like Halloween?

We’ll know in few years from now.

Tolu

Your pop culture/entertainment go-to. Music head. Wallflower. I do not like to write. On a mission to decipher covfefe.