Free trade zones and the neoliberal moment

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many African countries, especially Nigeria, witnessed an upsurge in both economic and political crises. The collapse of the former Soviet Union and the emergence of a new world political and economic order – coupled with a collapse in the prices of commodities on the international market – brought about a need for economic and political reform in many African countries (Adunbi Reference Adunbi2015; Chalfin Reference Chalfin2010; Van de Walle Reference Van de Walle2001; Reno Reference Reno1999). The oil collapse of the mid- and late 1980s dramatically affected the economy of Nigeria. Consequently, Nigeria had to grapple with a changing economic system, a rising debt profile, political instability as a result of incessant military coups, collapse of the industrial sector, high unemployment, and a failing infrastructure (Adunbi Reference Adunbi2015; Renne Reference Renne2015; Apter Reference Apter2005; Watts Reference Watts2004a; Reference Watts2004b). These political and economic crises forced a particular form of change in Nigeria's political systems and economy, shaped by the application of neoliberal economic policies that centred on the implementation of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and their consequences for governance. As a result, debates on the efficacy of SAPs for reforming African states dominated intellectual discourse in the 1980s and 1990s (see, for example, Ferguson Reference Ferguson2011; Reference Ferguson2006; Van de Walle Reference Van de Walle2001; Gibbon Reference Gibbon, Gibbon, Bangura and Ofstad1992; Young Reference Young1991). An SAP, argued its proponents, would make governance much more efficient by shrinking the government and empowering the private sector through privatization and commercialization programmes. To its opponents, SAPs would further entrench a prebendal state (Joseph Reference Joseph1987; Reference Joseph1996; Roitman Reference Roitman, Das and Poole2004; Chalfin Reference Chalfin2010) that would be detrimental to the general population. More importantly, SAPs, an initiative of international financial institutions, advocated for a more business-centred approach to the privatization and commercialization of businesses, enterprises and corporations owned by the government, such as in Nigeria.

One of the cardinal principles of SAPs was the promotion of foreign direct investments as a way to revamp the economy (Adunbi Reference Adunbi2015; Renne Reference Renne2015; Stein Reference Stein, Arestis and Sawyer2013). Advocates argued that, in order to attract foreign direct investments to a suffering economy, there had to be the establishment of an investment climate to create a pool of cheap labour, a devalued currency, easy business registration, improvements in infrastructure and the promotion of SEZs in which tax holidays could be granted to foreign businesses. Thus, in the 1980s and 1990s, attempts were made by successive regimes to start free export processing zones (EPZs) as a component of the SAP in Nigeria. The first FTZ, known as the Calabar Free Trade Zone, was established in Calabar in 1989. However, to formalize the EPZ arrangement, the administration of General Ibrahim Babangida signed a decree in 1992 that proclaimed the Nigerian Export Processing Zones Authority as an institution with the power to grant licences to foreign businesses interested in establishing a manufacturing/business outfit in Nigeria.

The decree states:

Following this decree, another law was promulgated in 1996: Decree no. 8, Oil and Gas Export Free Zone. This established the parameters for specialized oil and gas free trading zones in Nigeria. Consequently, the first oil and gas export free zone was established in Onne in Rivers State in the Niger Delta, while a second was established by the new civilian administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003 in Olokola, Ondo State, a few miles from Lagos. The consequences of neoliberal economic policies were to continue with the transition to civil rule in 1999 after many years of military dictatorship. The new administration of former military leader General Olusegun Obasanjo continued with an SAP under a new economic liberalization policy that put foreign direct investment and the establishment of FTZs at its core. The results that followed the new policy included the growth of FTZs in Nigeria from a mere single trade zone in 1989 to the present total of over thirty zones in 2018, with more to come.Footnote ² Thus, neoliberal moments in Nigeria reshaped the meaning of economic policies and foreign direct investments in ways that prioritize oil and manufacturing. Neoliberal economic and political practices thus produce a form of transnational collaboration that is not just about multinational corporations but also involves collaborative economic approaches among states. Such collaborative economic practices tend to fuse industrial development with the construction of infrastructure as the benchmark for such development. One example is the establishment of the LFTZ and OGFTZ in Igbesa and Lagos respectively, by different Chinese consortiums or organizations in partnership with the governments of Ogun and Lagos in the south-west of Nigeria.

Lekki Free Trade Zone: of political zones and economic dominance

Nigeria established formal diplomatic ties with China in February 1971, and, since that time, economic ties between the two countries have continued to grow. However, the last decade has witnessed an astronomical rise in Chinese investments in Nigeria; today, there are over 30,000 Chinese people and over US$2billion in investments (Lawanson and Agunbiade Reference Lawanson and Agunbiade2018; Harry Reference Harry2016; Lin and Wang Reference Lin and Wang2014; Brautigam Reference Brautigam2003).Footnote ³ Nowhere is this relationship more pronounced than in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria. One investment is the establishment of the LFTZ, a collaboration between China and the government of Lagos State. The LFTZ is ‘a 16,500-hectare area, about 60 kilometres east of central Lagos’, and a multibillion-dollar joint venture between Lagos State government and other private and public entities (Mthembu-Salter Reference Mthembu-Salter2009: 2). Work on the LFTZ began in 2006, ‘but progress in implementation has been uneven and slow’ (ibid.: 1). The China Civil Engineering Company is the largest shareholder with a 60 per cent stake in the project, while the Lagos State government and Nigerian partner Lekki Worldwide Investments Limited (LWIL) split the remaining 40 per cent with the Lekki Free Zone Development Corporation (LFZDC). Touted as the ‘best place to invest your money’, the project's vision, as stated on its website, is to ‘engage directly in the economic development of Nigeria by providing a choice for investors in the most conducive free zone business environment that will be recognized for setting standards of excellence’.Footnote ⁴ This notion of having the ‘most conducive’ atmosphere for business is embedded in the ideology of the market economy and rooted in neoliberal ideas of fiscal government. By suggesting to investors that the LFTZ provides the best place to invest their money, it calls attention to the unlimited possibilities that the zone provides. These possibilities include the investor's ability to repatriate their profits without having to pay taxes to the many layers of government in Nigeria, unlimited access to cheap and skilled labour, access to rent-free land, and a guaranteed 100 per cent foreign ownership of business enterprises within the zone. All of the listed characteristics define FTZs in Nigeria and elsewhere.

Among advocates of FTZs, it is believed that such zones help improve infrastructure and the business climate, resulting in an increase in technology transfer and leading eventually to overall benefits to the host country and the communities where such zones are established. The Chinese model – which first came into force in 1988 and has always been seen as the exemplar of trade zones – saw the creation of several SEZs that employed more flexible economic policies and government measures in order to foster growth and foreign direct investment within those areas. It is this model that the conceptualizers of the LFTZ had in mind when the zone was established. For example, Mr Jawando, the chair of the LFZDC, was quoted in World Finance on 4 September 2014 as saying, ‘Nigeria is pivotal in West Africa, and other countries are dependent on our industries and exports. Lekki will facilitate this and strengthen our links within the region’ (Kilhof Reference Kilhof2014). Strengthening links within the region, as Jawando mentioned, is a way to assert the dominance of Nigeria within West Africa in particular and in sub-Saharan Africa in general. It is expected that such dominance will culminate in creating a market for Nigeria's oil and gas and other manufactured products in all the FTZs in the country. The potential markets would provide opportunities, they say, for Nigerians and their patrons to make choices that would be beneficial to them: choices of job opportunities, choices of economic possibilities for the state, and choices of technological advancement. Thus, the trade zone becomes a coveted object for the state and its Chinese partners while also something to be despised by those displaced from their land and livelihoods. As we are reminded by Jean Baudrillard:

In this case, the state's freedom to choose where to site trade zones and who to partner with in constructing and configuring them impedes the ability of others – particularly community members – to make such choices in preserving their ancestral heritage, livelihood and land. While the LFTZ presents an opportunity for Nigeria and the Lagos State government to increase their revenue base, rebuild failing infrastructure and shape a new form of economic dominance in West Africa and beyond, missing in this narrative is how many communities – whose land and livelihoods depend on the areas marked for economic zones – have been faced with the choice of protesting against the state and the developers before being displaced.

‘Our ancestors gave this land and resources for us’

Many communities that live around the LFTZ belong to the Yoruba-speaking ethnic group of the south-western part of Nigeria. As many scholars have written (see, for example, Apter Reference Apter1992; Ajayi and Smith Reference Ajayi and Smith1964; Biobaku Reference Biobaku1973; Atanda Reference Atanda1980), the Yoruba have a common ancestral heritage that traces its emergence to Ile-Ife, a city considered to be the cradle of civilization (Olupona Reference Olupona2000; Apter Reference Apter1992; Atanda Reference Atanda1980). Thus, many communities within the trade zone trace their origin to Ile-Ife, from where their forefathers are said to have migrated. The journey from Ile-Ife and other Yoruba towns such as Ijebu-Ode – which is a few miles from Lagos – marked the beginning of a life of fishing, farming and brewing for many members of the community that continues to this day. Agricultural practice in these communities is highly dependent on the Atlantic Ocean as well as on the surrounding land, which, many of the communities claim, was bequeathed to them by their ancestors. Thus, ancestral claims to the ownership of land and other natural resources are often marked by the ability of community members to trace their heritage to the beginning of settlement in any particular location; this is exactly what members of the different communities in Lekki and Igbesa have done (Adunbi Reference Adunbi2015). This ancestral claim helps galvanize community property ownership in the face of opposition or incursion from outsiders: in this case, the various governmental agencies and their Chinese partners. This is the argument made by the LFTZ communities who are staking claims to ownership of the area marked for development as an FTZ by the state.

In an attempt to reclaim what they believe are their ancestral lands and resources, many communities within the LFTZ are collaborating, through their organization the Lekki Coastal Area Community Development Association (LCACDA), with a non-governmental organization (NGO): the Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC). SERAC, whose headquarters are in Lagos, has been collaborating with the LCACDA since 2006, according to many informants. In the summer of 2016, I visited several communities within the LFTZ and interacted with members of the LCACDA in Ibeju-Lekki. I also visited the offices of SERAC in the Magodo area of mainland Lagos, where I also met many of SERAC's officials involved with the LCACDA. In one of several interactions, Emmanuel, one of SERAC's attorneys, told me:

The Lagos State governor at the time, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, had initiated the LFTZ in collaboration with a Chinese consortium as his own way of ‘taking Lagos to a new height’, said Emmanuel. SERAC's intervention was precipitated by Bola Ahmed Tinubu's attempt to forcefully take over land that belonged to about twenty-six autonomous communities in the Ibeju-Lekki area of Lagos to make way for the FTZ; the communities included Idashon, Okunraye, Idokun Itoke, Ilege, Ilekuru, Imobido, Magbonsegun and Tiye. SERAC intervened and asked the government to give due compensation to the communities. As Emmanuel narrated to me in the summer of 2015 in his SERAC office:

The antagonism mentioned by Emmanuel stemmed from the lack of trust that many members of the communities felt towards NGOs. As one informant told me: ‘Some of these NGOs cannot be trusted. We cannot trust them because they sometimes collaborate with the government. We will rather stay and fight on our own than be deceived by an NGO – they will go behind our back to stab us.’Footnote ⁶ While many members of the LCACDA went along with SERAC in negotiating with the Lagos State government, members of the Idasho community opted out. Not only did the Idasho community opt out of the negotiations, but they also discontinued their membership in the LCACDA by forming their own Idasho Community Development Association (ICDA). The secretary of the ICDA mentioned that SERAC was becoming too ‘cosy’ with the Lagos State government and they thought the ICDA's interests would not be best represented by such an NGO. As it turned out, the executive director of SERAC, Felix Morka, later joined the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) – the party in power in Lagos – and declared his interest in running for office in Delta State. In an interview in the summer of 2017, an official of SERAC mentioned how Morka's political interest was never a factor in how he helped the communities negotiate an MOU with the Lagos State government.

Thus, SERAC helped negotiate an MOU between the Lagos State government, officials of the LFTZ, and the twenty-six communities. Even though the MOU promised a 10 per cent stake in the LFTZ for the communities, this and other components of the memorandum were never implemented. Indeed, according to my interview with an official of the LFTZ, the Lagos State government is supposedly holding a stake of about 20 per cent on behalf of the communities.

The MOU was comprehensive and touched on issues of employment opportunities for community members, compensation for the acquisition of land, and business or contract opportunities. Specifically, the MOU promised to make available about 750 plots of land to the communities. However, although the plots were released, community members could not take physical possession because the land belonged to other communities that were not part of the MOU – they had opted out for reasons ranging from the insincerity of the government and a lack of trust in SERAC to the feeling that they did not want their community life to be disrupted. Consequently, nothing really substantial has taken place in terms of compensation for the takeover of community land in the area. By virtue of the Land Use Act of 1973, all land and natural resources belong to the government, but people hold on to communal land through a tenure system. Hence, these conflicting claims have often warranted the state forcefully taking land and forcing people from their livelihoods and communal living arrangements. In the process, ancestral shrines, ancestral cemeteries and other valuable community holdings are affected. One such example is the impending displacement of VeronicaFootnote ⁷ from her small palm oil-processing business right behind the LFTZ.

Veronica is in her mid-thirties and lives with her family of five children and her husband. She has been living in the same hut since she was five years old and shares the compound with her parents, whose hut is adjacent to hers and her husband's. Right in front of the hut is her grandfather's gravesite, a small fireplace used for processing palm oil, and a pile of large cartons used for packaging the palm oil. In the surrounding areas are the palm trees that Veronica uses in making palm oil. Veronica's father is the current chief priest and custodian of the community's traditions. The chief priest oversees some of the shrines located a few metres away from the compound, which are marked to denote the steps their ancestors took to get to their present abode. Therefore, the small compound sits in a triangle consisting of the small business that sustains the family, their sites of ancestral worship, and a space of community living. As I sat down with Veronica for an interview in July 2016, she put her right hand on her chin, gazed at her grandfather's grave, looked at the small amount of palm oil that she had just finished making that afternoon, and gave a long sigh. She then retorted: ‘What will happen to my grandfather's gravesite? What will happen to all these palm trees, my business and my heritage?’Footnote ⁸ As Veronica pondered these questions, she looked back and saw the huge fence of the LFTZ behind her and suggested to me that very soon ‘they [the LFTZ] would come with their bulldozers to clear the entire area without thinking twice about my livelihood, my community and the future of my children and extended family. Where will I go and what will I do?’Footnote ⁹ Veronica's worries are not unfounded. In 2014, the then governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, took the businessman Alhaji Aliko Dangote to meet with several Ibeju-Lekki community members to inform them of Dangote's intention to build an oil refinery as part of the LFTZ development project in the area. At the meeting, Fashola, who spoke in Yoruba, asked if the community wanted the refinery or not and if the community wanted the businessman to take the refinery to another state. Many community members had feared a loss of livelihood, but the governor responded by threatening that they would all be displaced by force and that, if there was any protest, it would be crushed with force.Footnote ¹⁰ At the end of Fashola's speech, many community members showed discontent, but they also understood that the state would carry out its threat. This was exactly Veronica's worry, and as we sat down to chat that hot summer afternoon in July 2016, she pointed to many of her community members who had already been displaced to make way for the construction of the oil refinery and other businesses within the LFTZ. When asked about the MOU, Veronica responded by suggesting that it was not just about the MOU, but also about how her livelihood and all that she had known would disappear. For Veronica, there seemed to be a sense of emptiness, even with the promise of rapid infrastructural development and industrialization by the management of the LFTZ and the state.

While Veronica is concerned with the loss of her livelihood and the grave of her grandfather, Korede,Footnote ¹¹ a twenty-five-year-old fisherman, is much more interested in the effects of the dredging of the Atlantic Ocean on his small fishing business. To allow the construction of a seaport and an oil refinery in the FTZ, the Dangote Petrochemical and Oil Company is dredging the Atlantic Ocean. In October 2015, Korede and other youths in the Ibeju-Lekki area organized a protest against the FTZ; this led to the death of an executive of the LFTZ, and the state's response was to deploy troops to the area. The fracas that followed the deployment of troops resulted in the deaths of some community members and the destruction of properties in the area as well as the arrest and detainment of many of the youths who were alleged to have participated in the protest. When I met Korede in the summer of 2017, he relived his experience at the hands of the police, suggesting that he nearly lost his life. As he said:

Korede claimed that he was lucky to have escaped arrest but he is worried that he may not be able to practise his trade again – fishing. When asked about the MOU, Korede's response corroborated the responses of many informants, which is that FTZs, framed as part of the state's infrastructural and industrial development, will eventually result in the loss of livelihoods and the life that they have grown used to. Many feared that the oil refining within the FTZ would replicate many of the challenges of resource extraction in the Niger Delta, including polluted water and a devastated environment.

Thus, MOUs have become a standard-bearer for the ways in which corporations – particularly those in the business of oil extraction – engage with communities that are the host to these businesses (Adunbi Reference Adunbi2015; Reference Adunbi2013; Watts Reference Watts2004a; Reference Watts2004b). In many instances, the signing of MOUs with communities where resources are extracted serves the purpose of making promises that are never fulfilled, even though community members also recognize the futility of an MOU. One fact recognized by many informants is that MOUs are unable to address many of the challenges they face – loss of livelihood, displacement from their community and devastation of their environment and ancestral land and resources, which corporations tend to take away from them. The lack of access and the experiences of displacement that communities have always known are what shape their relationship with businesses and the state – and, in this case, with the management of the FTZs. The state and big businesses always frame their response to community development through the notion of rapid construction of infrastructure, industrialization and development. Thus, development and industrialization become a ‘one size fits all’ approach. As Arturo Escobar once reminded us, the field of development economics is based entirely on the development trajectory of the West, meaning that ‘modernity … remains primarily a European experience that has sought to become universal’ (Escobar Reference Escobar1988: 438). While China does not claim to model its practices on those of the West, it has become clear that Chinese development – through the establishment of economic zones – is modelled on a particular form of development practice that portrays rural dwellers, at least in Escobar's telling, as underdeveloped and in need of change and industrialization. Hence, China and Nigeria subscribe wholeheartedly to the pursuit of economic expansion at the expense of communities’ loss of livelihood and ancestral practices. In the case of Veronica and the members of her community, economy as an object disenfranchises the population. The trade zones are legitimized as an answer to what the state sees as a need for rapid industrialization and development as a gateway to modernization. Therefore, economy as an object replaces economy as a practice that caters to the needs of the entire population.

‘This place is not Nigeria’: FTZs and the construction of the sovereign

The notion of FTZs not being Nigeria first appeared in one of the conversations I had with Nigerian workers in the zones in the summer of 2016. We had gathered at a lunch table in one of the restaurants inside the area that was demarcated for some of the Nigerian staff of the OGFTZ in Igbesa, when suddenly one of my informants uttered the phrase ‘This place is not Nigeria’. I became curious to know why such a statement is important not just to this informant but to others I came across in the FTZs. The concept of a place not being Nigeria emanated from the idea of who is an ‘expatriate’ and who is not. An expatriate is considered to be a highly knowledgeable émigré who is hired by an employer from another country – mostly in the West – to use his knowledge at a workplace in a country considered to be ‘underdeveloped’. As such, in Nigeria, expatriates are highly regarded by many of the people whom I interviewed. Thus, since FTZs are considered to be sovereign enclaves where the state selectively cedes part of its sovereignty – especially its sovereignty over business registration, taxes, labour laws and other regulatory practices – those who work in the zone consider themselves part of a new sovereign state. The ceding of part of the state's sovereignty to an enclave fits into the shifting meaning of the economy from a system of social practice and relations to an object that is determined by numbers.

As Timothy Mitchell claims, there has been a shift in the meaning of ‘economy’ since the nineteenth century from a system embedded in wider social relations to an object that refers to a ‘self-contained structure or totality of relations of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services within a geographical space’ (Reference Mitchell2011: 125). This shift means that ‘economy’ has become ‘an object whose management [is] the central task of government, requiring the deployment of specialist knowledge’ (ibid.) – a form of specialist knowledge that, in this case, is imbued only in the managers of FTZs and their state collaborators. In Nigeria, the abundance of oil resources automatically translates to the potentialities of oil revenue, which in turn shape the development practices that give rise to the establishment of economic zones that mediate human interactions. The state's discussion of the leveraging of oil revenue – an invisible object in itself – through other technological objects such as FTZs and oil refineries offers an avenue for us to understand how oil mediates political and business interactions in countries such as Nigeria. These neoliberal affordances shape the practices that allow designated areas of the country – FTZs – to become their own sovereignty, hence informants’ repeated notion that ‘this place is not Nigeria’.

The question is: what makes this place ‘not Nigeria’? The answer is the specific practices that distinguish trade zones from the rest of the country. For example, the Corporate Affairs Commission registers all limited liability and other business enterprises in Nigeria, with the exception of the FTZs, where enterprises are regulated and registered through the offices of the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA). As one informant told me: ‘The free zone is like a mini-city. It is considered not to be part of Lagos or Ogun. Once you are in the free zone, you are out of Nigeria because this place is not part of Nigeria.’Footnote ¹² The FTZ has three major areas: living quarters, a manufacturing zone, and the oil and gas sector. All members of staff are expected to live within the zone but not all the staff quarters have been completed, so many Nigerians live outside the zone, although the FTZ provides all amenities. Although many parts of the LFTZ and OGFTZ are still under construction, some companies are already operating within the zone. The zones, especially the OGFTZ, parade their replicas of a functioning police force and other disciplinary apparatuses of the state. The regular state apparatus is confined to the entrance of the zone in both the LFTZ and the OGFTZ. In the OGFTZ, the commander of the police is a Chinese official who is assisted by Nigerian officers. While the Nigerian police, customs and immigration officials are positioned in offices at the entrance of the FTZs, within the zones the exercise of power lies with the officials of the FTZs. The presence of Nigerian officials is mainly symbolic because the FTZs have their own regulatory practices, hence the feeling among many informants that living or working inside the zone is like being outside Nigeria. FTZs are constructed as autonomous zones that are independent of the state through the zones’ regulatory practices. These zones operate in ways that resonate with what Trouillot (Reference Trouillot2003) calls ‘the state-effects’. ‘State-effects’ indicate the use of state mechanisms of control and rule; in the FTZs, the setting up of their own security departments, proposed offshore banking operations, customs departments, and their ability to engage in business transactions and other self-regulatory practices outside the purview of the state are a clear indication of how such practices create what I call the effect of a state within the state.

Thus, the organization of the FTZ, particularly its workforce and regulatory practices, projects a neoliberal notion of freedom while at the same time extenuating a new moment of colonial practices in the postcolony in ways that resonate with Jauch's (Reference Jauch2011) important question about twenty-first-century colonialism, in which he likens Chinese investments in Africa to a new moment in colonialism. For example, all workers, as I was informed and observed while there, are considered to be ‘expatriates’. The notion of ‘expatriates’ suggests that the workforce is foreign, and, since the space of the FTZ is also considered foreign, the tag ‘expatriates’ seems to project a notion of sovereignty within a sovereign nation. While all workers are considered to be expatriates, there are also different categories of expatriates within the zone. For instance, Nigerian expatriates are mostly subservient to Chinese expatriates in deeds and practice. Living quarters for Chinese expatriates, who are mostly senior or management staff, are in an exclusive part of the zone with a better layout and better amenities than those in the Nigerian area. Living quarters are also demarcated in a way that articulates class distinction, which brings back memories of such distinctions in colonial Nigeria when government reservation areas were exclusive to the colonial administrators while those Nigerians who worked for the colonial authorities were relegated to the rest of the country (Adunbi Reference Adunbi2015; Watson Reference Watson2013; Apter Reference Apter1992; Mann Reference Mann1991). For example, in colonial Lagos, the British lived in Ikoyi and Victoria Island, a highbrow area of Lagos, while the Nigerian staff lived in designated quarters in Yaba and Surulere, an area considered to be for low-income workers. Similar colonial practices were replicated in all the major cities and towns in colonial Nigeria. In the postcolony, multinational oil corporations have also shaped such practices through housing classifications, as Adunbi (Reference Adunbi2015) observed in the city of Port Harcourt.

One of the important regulatory practices of the state is the management and disciplining of international banking and financial transactions. The deregulation of international banking and financial transactions within the FTZs can also be read within the framework of new colonial practices. For example, the state regulates how banking and financial transactions are conducted within its territory and how foreign transactions and other monetary transfers that companies can undertake are taxed. However, this is different in the zones, particularly the LFTZ. For example, one of the regulatory practices being put in place in the LFTZ is the establishment of offshore financial and banking operations. The use of offshore banking and financial services allows corporations and businesses to shield transactions from the prying eyes of the state and avoid paying taxes on profits, and thus creates a form of secrecy (Shaxson Reference Shaxson2014; Stiglitz Reference Stiglitz2008; Unger Reference Unger2009). While the establishment of an offshore banking system within the FTZs is envisaged to facilitate easy access to financial support for businesses within the zones, this will further legitimize the claim that the zones are ‘not Nigeria’ – the very term ‘offshore’ is suggestive of the fact that it is foreign or completely detached. As one informant noted: ‘With offshore banking in our zone, we will no longer be required to process our financial transactions through the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.’Footnote ¹³ Since the CBN is the main regulatory institution of the state in the area of banking and financial services, bypassing it creates a sovereign space for the FTZs in which they can self-regulate and enforce their own regulatory practices away from the oversight of the state. Therefore, offshore banking provides a platform that allows the zones to produce, manage and deploy their profits in ways that protect them from state regulatory practices. The infrastructure of offshore practices, combined with the disciplinary practices of the zones, creates an environment of displacement and deprivation for populations in such a way that the zone becomes a state detached from the larger state.