middleman
Middleman: the person or business that stands between the maker of a thing and the final buyer, and takes a cut for making the deal happen.
In plain English
Auntie Bisi in Mile 12 does not grow a single pepper or tomato herself, but she has been buying from farmers in Shagamu since 1998 and selling to the mama put sellers who cannot travel that far themselves.
She is the middleman, though nobody calls a woman that to her face. She buys a basket for ₦8,000, adds her transport, her time, her risk that the tomatoes might spoil before she finds a buyer, and sells for ₦11,000.
Some people think this ₦3,000 is stealing from the farmer or overcharging the seller. It is neither. It is payment for solving a problem both sides could not solve alone, the problem of distance, trust, and time.
The same thing happens when a UK based agency helps a Nigerian graduate apply to a British university and takes a fee, or when a bureau de change in Lagos changes your dollars into naira because you cannot walk into a foreign bank yourself.
Technology keeps trying to remove the middleman, letting farmers sell straight to buyers on an app, letting people send money home without a agent standing between them. Sometimes this works. Often the middleman simply moves online and calls himself a platform instead.
The lesson is not that middlemen are good or bad. It is that whoever solves the hardest, most inconvenient part of a transaction usually gets paid for it, whatever title they carry.
A cloth trader in Kano buys ankara from a Chinese exporter at ₦2,500 per yard through an agent in Lagos who charges a ₦150 per yard fee for handling shipping, customs, and language. The agent never touches a sewing machine but earns from removing three headaches the trader could not solve alone.
Questions people ask
Is it wrong to use a middleman instead of buying directly from the source?
No. You are paying for convenience, speed, or access you do not have. It only becomes a problem when their fee is far bigger than the actual work or risk they carried.
Why do prices in Nigeria often feel high by the time goods reach the final buyer?
Because several middlemen may sit in the chain, each adding their own cut for transport, storage, or connections, and each layer adds to what you finally pay.
Can I cut out the middleman and deal directly with the source myself?
Sometimes, if you have the time, contacts, and patience to do what the middleman does. Many people try this, realise how much work it is, and happily go back to paying someone else to handle it.
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