Dr Cosmas Maduka Lectures jobless graduates, students on entrepreneurship, says his 7 years of apprenticeship , his best University

Dr Cosmas Maduka, the Chief Executive Officer of Coscharis Group, never had university education but he lectured hundreds of students that attended the third edition of the Nigeria Leadership Summit in Lagos.

His humble beginning was the topic of discussion. Hhaving  lost his dad at the age of four, he quit school in Elementary 3. Yet, today, he oversees chains of business worth billions of naira.

The business mogul, who was a guest speaker at the annual summit, organised by the Anabel Group at the Oriental Hotel, Lekki, Lagos, opened windows of opportunities in entrepreneurship to young adults and students from different tertiary institutions in the country troubled by the scourge of unemployment. Among the participants were young graduates hankering for jobs, as well as those that lost their jobs.

The convener of the summit, Nicholas Okoye, said the annual programme was intended to empower millions of jobless youths, including graduates through entrepreneurship. He warned that unemployment fuels terrorism and robbery and other vices tormenting the nation. He urged youths not to wait for the government to create jobs, even as he enumerated the several business opportunities in the country.

Okoye explained that unemployment crisis in the country can be solved when young people grab the future in their hands and become job creators. “There are opportunities in Nigeria. The challenge is that we often miss these opportunities”, he said.

Even though Maduka mounted the stage amid loud ovation, his thrash-to-throne story brought a hush of silence in the crowded hall. He recalled the death of his father when he was only four years old. His widow-mother burnt her fingers daily frying akara balls to support the family. Poverty forced young Maduka to rise on his feet, such that at an early age, he had learnt how to climb and cut palm fruits for elderly women for a pittance.

Although he and his mother worked tirelessly to set food on their table, austerity bared its fangs on them as Maduka had to drop out from school in his Elementary 3. His anguished mum sent him to live with her parents. It was from there that he was sent to Lagos to live with his uncle as an apprentice. He was only six years old.

Thereafter he was to live in the prison of hope for seven years, dreaming when he would set up his own business. But he suffered another crushing blow when his uncle rewarded him with just N200 after seven years of apprenticeship. You can say then that it was from ground zero that he walked the winding path to affluence. The Coscharis Group has the franchise of over eight automobile brands and also sells automobile spare parts. Other subsidiaries include: Coscharis Technology, Coscharis Foods and Beverages, Coscharis Medicals and Coscharis Agro-Allied.

The future, according to Eleanor Roosevelt, belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. But for Maduka, his disclosure of his vision to have a building as beautiful as Leventis Building earned him a knock on the head. Being an apprentice at that time, an elderly person who heard him utter such “an improbable words” decisively knocked silly off his head, perhaps, in an attempt to wake him from his childish daydreaming.

Maduka’s inspiring story is reproduced here as an encouragement to students overwhelmed by the economic downturns of the nation. His testament of hope, surely, would motivate despondent graduates to look out for silver linings in their clouds.  Excerpts 

What students, graduates should know about entrepreneurship

Many young people want to be entrepreneurs because very many of them look at the finished product. But what many of them fail to see is that there is no finished product that does not go through a process. When you see the finished product, you will like it.

My perspective of business is that for you to be an entrepreneur, you need to understand that it takes hard work initially. It is about the vision you nurture in your mind, about helping to make that vision grow to where people can believe it, touch it and feel it.

At inception, it is only you that have the concept. Many people would not believe you. Many people would doubt you because it never happened and they have not seen it.

The man standing before you today, I represent what you can call mission impossible. If I tell you my story, my background, you will know that nothing is impossible. If anybody has reason to fail, I am the one. If anybody has reason not to succeed, I am the one. At the age of four, my father died. The best I knew of my father was a day that was like a festival in our compound. There were masquerades and people were coming. I thought it was something really nice to happen.

I saw my father lying in bed lifelessly and dressed in black suit, black tie. My mother was at the far corner of the wall crying helplessly. It was a mixed feeling type of event. People were kind to me. In those days, we used to eat rice on Sundays or on a feast day but that day I ate all the rice that I wanted. People were kind and gave me all the attention I needed on that day.

Later in life, I came to know that it was the day my father died. The death of my father cost me the opportunity of going through a formal education. I look at some of these young people today and I feel excited listening to them.

Many of us do not know that you make yourself when you are still young. Everyone of us here today is a product of our thinking. What you think, you become. It all starts from one’s mindset. The death of my father cost me the privilege of attending a formal school. My mother became my guiding angel and mentor. Women make a lot of difference in the lives of their children. My mother was my angel. She was a godly woman, of staunch catholic background. She taught me how to pray. She got us up early in the morning to recite catholic rosary. I did all of these.

My mother inspired me. She spoke words into my ears that I could still recollect at the age of four. My mother told me that I will succeed, that I will go places. And this became a building block in my life.

My entrepreneurial spirit started as a street hawker

When you see children of the age of seven hawking on the streets and you say they are abused, I used to be one of them. My mother discovered my entrepreneurial capability. Before I turned six, I started hawking on the streets. My mother would fry akara in the morning and I would sell on the streets before preparing for school. The best I did in a four corner wall, what you call school is Elementary 3, that is what you call third grade today. Life is not about what happened to you. Rather, it is about how you respond. You can’t decide what life will throw at you but you can decide how to respond.

Many of us focus on a wrong thing. We focus on what is going wrong in our lives. But you need to focus on what is going right in your life. That is why I said that life is about mindset. Anything you come short of in life, some other thing compensates for it. It is about you whether you dwell on those things that are not going well or on the one thing that is working well in your life.

Not having the opportunity to go to school helped me to develop retentive memory. Sometimes people say I have ‘electric brain’. There is nothing like that. Having stopped schooling in Elementary 3, I couldn’t make note by then. When my colleagues were making notes, I was busy storing what we were discussing in my brain. And when you are opening your note, I will be opening my system upstairs to repeat exactly what happened.  So, I was able to comprehend things easily.

Refined in furnace of affliction

At six, my mother couldn’t support me any more and sent me to live with her parents. I lived with my grandparents. It was from there that my uncle took me to do apprenticeship for him in Lagos. The place still exists at Oyingbo Bus Stop. It is a store. There I used to sleep.

Initially, my uncle thought I was too young to take care of myself. He would lock me up in that store, something you will call dehumanization. That’s what I went through. I would stay in that shop, while he locked up and went home. He gave me a bottle to ease myself whenever I felt pressed in the night. If the place had caught fire, I would have been a dead man but the grace of God saw me through all these. That was the kind of upbringing that I had.

I can tell you, life is about mentorship. Many of you had the opportunity to go to school. And that is why I tell you to appreciate it and make good use of it. Your problem can become your opportunity and your difficulties, you can turn it to dividend, subject to your mindset.

I slept in that store, myself and the guy that owns Chisco Enterprises, Anyaegbunam. When I got to the age of eight, my uncle felt I could manage the shop and left the keys with me, to continue to sleep there.

At 5.30 every morning, I would wake up to take my bath on the street. Some young students going to school would close their mouths but some would point their left finger at me and say, ‘shop rat’. I would look at them and say: “five years from today, I will be greater than anyone of you that called me a ‘shop rat.’

I didn’t have the opportunity to go to school. What about school? School is important, do not think I am about to support ignorance. If I do, I am making a mistake. I have three boys today who are graduates and they have all done their masters. My daughter is a medical doctor.  I don’t support ignorance. What I am saying is that some of you who lacked the opportunity to go to school must not sit back and only complain about what went wrong. What do you do to what life threw at you?

The death of my father created a room in my life. I told myself that I will not mess up and fool around like other people. I had nothing to depend on. I will pay dearly if I mess around. I had nobody to fall back on. Incidentally, I was the second in the family.  How my parents had four children in quick succession under four years, I do not know. But I became a bread winner at a very early stage of my life.

How I started business with N200 capital

I did apprenticeship for seven years. At the end of seven years, the reward for my stewardship was N200. It is not about money. If you ask me to tell you the percentage of the capital in terms of knowledge in business, I will equate capital 20 per cent and knowledge 80 per cent. Don’t ever place capital ahead of knowledge.

Knowledge you have on what you want to do is more important than the capital you have. When my uncle gave me N200 after seven years of apprenticeship, I went to my senior brother on a motorbike that evening. My elder brother asked me to leave the money and go. I turned to him and asked, “Do you have any to give me when we get home?” He said, “No’.  I said I would better hold the one I have seen.

But I have been a very determined individual. I looked at my uncle straight in the eyes and said, “Five years from today, you would be amazed on what would come out of this N200”. For me, it wasn’t the N200 that mattered. It was the freedom to do whatever I wanted with my life. I was not under anybody’s tutelage any more. So, my excitement was that I can do with my life whatever I wanted.

You make yourself when you are young. Statistics has proven that 86 per cent of successful people is determined between the ages of 14 and 25. Very many of you that passed 28 and 30, you can make it at 70 or 80 but it is very rare. At young age, you have all the energy to create for yourself a different world of your dream.

At 15, my uncle gave me N200. I had clear ambition of what to do with my life. One of my visions was that I would buy my first car before I turn 21. Another one was that I would be living in my own apartment before 17. One of my ambitions was to marry before I turn 20 and indeed, I married when I was a little above 19. Yes, I have been married for 36 years. I had goals, things I wanted to achieve in life. A goal without a plan is a wish. If you find a route where there are no obstacles, it probably would not lead you anywhere. Those obstacles are building blocks that make you. What you do with your vision is what matters. Vision is important but how to translate the vision into action is what really matters. Having the vision alone is not what is required. You need to have plans to actualize the vision. You need to write out your goals.

Put yourself under strict condition. In my own case, my seven years of apprenticeship is the best university I can go to. That I didn’t have the opportunity to go to school never made me feel inferior to anybody on the face of this earth. I didn’t limit myself. If I had limited myself, I would have been an Okada rider on the streets today. I determined to choose differently.  All the obstacles on my way, I always have it in my mind that there is no obstacle I would not surmount. It is like the vision of a voyage. You know the destination but you don’t know all the routes to take you there.

The first thing I did was that I took my N200 and teamed up with my elder brother and formed a company called Maduka Brothers. We would come to Lagos to buy merchandise and go back to sell. In life, you need to open your eyes. One of the companies I met first in my life was the Leventis group. I went to Leventis at Oyingbo to buy spare parts. When I entered Leventis, the system and processes with which the transaction was done fired the vision in me to create an institution that would be modeled after the Leventis group. I saw something that fired the vision that I had. As a youngman, when I was still working for my uncle, one day I was going to take a night bus to Nnewi to buy motorcycle spare parts to bring to Lagos to sell. We were passing through the AG Leventis Building. I looked at that building and said, “One day, I will make a building like this”. An adult escorting me to enter a bus at Iddo knocked me on the head. He could not understand how a boy that was sleeping in a shop could be dreaming of having such a building.

How far can you dream? Shoot at the moon; if you don’t reach it, you fall on the stars. If you have a true vision, I don’t mind how long it might take. It will be tested but it must come to pass. What you do with your vision is what counts. My dream and my vision for Coscharis was to build an institution that would be timeless in relevance and value. When I said it, people misunderstood me. The MD of Amazon said, to be an entrepreneur, you must be willing to be misunderstood for a very long time. It is part of the package because you are seeing something other people are not seeing. It was not long before I differed with my brother on ideology because of what was firing me. And that was how I created Cosharis today.

Interview By Sam Otti of the Sun