Seven long schedules name Nigeria, and no short one at all

Where the short schedules go in Africa instead

Thirty-one of the thirty-eight opened documents stop at forty entries or fewer, and eleven of those thirty-one name at least one African market. Every one of the eleven passes over Nigeria.

They go elsewhere on the continent instead, and the concentration is striking. Zimbabwe appears in nine of the eleven. Côte d’Ivoire appears in six. Uganda appears in five, Morocco and Senegal in two each, and Algeria and Kenya in one apiece. Seven African markets are written into at least one short schedule; the largest of them all collects nothing.

Eleven short documents reach the continent, and each of them stops elsewhere.

Nothing in the documents explains the pattern, and this page declines to invent an explanation. What the finding rules out is a comfortable reading of Nigeria’s low total. A figure of seven here reflects the absence of narrow documents rather than any positive judgement, because narrow documents exist in this reading, do reach Africa, and reach other parts of it.

Nigeria at seven, South Africa at zero

The two largest economies on the continent sit at opposite ends of this reading. Nigeria collects seven entries; South Africa collects none across all thirty-eight opened schedules, which puts it in the same position as Norway, Ireland, Canada and New Zealand.

Zimbabwe, at sixteen, holds the highest African figure in the whole index, and it is a far smaller market than either. Any story about operators withdrawing from large African markets breaks against those three numbers. The totals track the drafting habits of thirty-eight companies, and the geography inside them belongs to whoever wrote each list. Kenya at eight and Morocco at nine sit between the extremes.

Thirty-one schedules with no Nigerian entry

Thirty-one restricted clauses were opened and read through, and Nigeria stays outside all of them. That sentence is the whole of what those thirty-one support.

A firm can leave a market off its published list and still decline the account at the cashier, because the processor behind it works from an accepted-country roll that stays private. It can leave the market off and still ask for documents when a payout is requested, months after the deposit cleared. Five of the seven addresses above are regional editions written for Australia, Canada or Germany.

Sixty-two clauses that stayed shut

Sixty-two brands in the hundred keep a restricted clause this pass never retrieved. Terms moved, pages demanded a sign-in, archives held nothing usable.

Their cells print blank, and the blank marks the boundary of the work rather than a judgement on the brand. It adds to no figure on this page and changes no position in the table. Read as permission it would dress unfinished work as advice, which the whole index is built to avoid.

A commercial list, and Nigerian statute

Everything counted above is contract language, drafted by one side of an agreement to govern its dealings with the other. The operator revises it when a licence condition or a banking relationship moves, and publishes the revision without explanation.

What Nigerian law provides comes from instruments outside this reading, and the question is left with them entirely. Both arrive as printed rules, and only one of them was passed by anybody. The country index holds the same separation elsewhere, including Qatar at the same total.