I recently read an inspiring story in the social media – where else these days. It was about a young man who read Accountancy in the university. And because he was good with figures, he had assumed he would get a good job in a bank after graduation. He was wrong and it took several application letters for him to realise the banks were not exactly queueing up to offer him a job. Rather than moan about the system like many do these days, he took a clerical job in an uncle’s retail shop. It was there he learnt a lesson that was to change his outlook to life. He found salary earners asking for goods on credit until month-end.
Maybe his ability to crunch numbers helped him, but he realized it was a debt trap; a hole that many of them might not be able to dig themselves out of. It made him realise that the much coveted salaried jobs could hardly make any earner rich. He resigned and took his fate in his hands like most entrepreneurs do. He took up a job as night security so he could free his day. He set up a barbing salon. After a while, with discipline and self-denial, he was able to buy a small generator to further grow his business. When he felt he had built up some capital, he went to trading and retailing which his mother had always done and from whom he had learnt the rudiments of the retail business before honing them with his uncle. As the business grew, he decided to pool resources with the uncle under whom he had earlier worked. Together, they own about the largest chain of indigenous supermarkets in the country today. No prize for getting the name of the man with such an inspiring, rags-to-riches story. His name is emblazoned on big Supermarkets in Lagos, Abuja and elsewhere.
Several years ago, a man who later became the President of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce, told me another inspiring story. He had set up a revolving loan to help widows and single mothers in his home town. He was amazed at their diligence and how they monitored themselves to keep the rate of default as low as possible. He felt proud and fulfilled as he watched lives being transformed by his seed money which he thought was a mere pittance. These two inspiring stories teach discipline, the power of small beginnings, and the dignity of labour. They teach the need for skills and financial empowerment however you can find them. Add to these, the ability to dream big while starting small, the willingness to delay gratification and you have the making of a successful entrepreneur.
Contrast this with another story. A widow who was sleeping under the stairs in a church was pitied and given a room in a boy’s quarter by a parishioner. The woman had three children and sought permission to bring them in. The request was granted. Years passed. The woman’s petty trading which she was encouraged and empowered to start had also improved. The children grew, playing around the expansive compound of their host. When the first son finished secondary school, their host who worked for an oil company, offered to get him a job in a petrol station so he could help his mother and to stop him roaming the streets. He declined. His reason? It was too close to his former school – a government school – and his former school mates would make fun at him if they saw him doing menial jobs in a petrol station. No prize for guessing what kind of jobs this lad would like to be seen doing and what the future a lad with such a mind-set would likely turn out to be. It is a toss-up between political thuggery, kidnapping and yahoo -yahoo, with the last two being increasingly likely.
But before you castigate this lad for forgetting his humble background, for ignoring the power of humble beginnings and for disrespecting the dignity of labour, you should first look in the mirror. If you were one of those who have ranted or derided the efforts of Mrs Oluremi Tinubu, wife of the President in the social media over her desire to empower poor, female peasants, then you would be a hypocrite. Immediately Mrs Tinubu announced her intention to arrange grants for women who are poor and unemployed, TikTok warriors went on a rampage. They have disparaged. They have decried. They have insulted. Yet, reality remains. Poverty is high in the country. Unemployment is high. Population rate is high. Here is someone saying ‘let’s do something. Let’s start somewhere.
Let’s empower some of the poor and very vulnerable to stand on their feet’. She was offering grants, not loans. I expected people to offer suggestions on how to fine tune this initiative if they find certain things wrong with it. Instead, they have uttered generic, worn out statements about the decay in the system and the plight of the poor. None of those statements, even if true, would put food on the table; none would save the poor from waking up hungry. All they have done in the quest to gain political capital from the initiative, is to attempt to throw the baby out with the bath water. Yet, it is possible that this initiative if properly applied and properly monitored, could change lives positively forever. Those who travel to Ilesha and Ekiti from Ibadan know about ‘akara Osu’ AKA ‘the akara industry’. I patronised the joint a lot in my youthful days. Legend states that many of the women built houses and educated their children through this means. Besides, many of these TikTok warriors have parents who sent them through school through petty trading
They now have friends who make a living packaging Nigerian snacks abroad. I have bought well packaged ‘kulikuli’ in our Supermarkets, including those of our subject and his uncle.
And it is very possible that a percentage, however tiny, of those who are empowered by the First Lady’s initiative, could end up becoming successful entrepreneurs like the inspiring story I started this article with. We should never discount the power of humble beginnings and the importance of giving people a sense of worth. We should never discountenance dignity of labour and what it can mean to an increasingly rapacious society like ours.
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