It is a well-known fact that Nnewi is the city with the largest concentration of millionaires in West Africa. Nnewi has succeeded in producing many business owners simply with the system of apprenticeships. Much has been said about the uniqueness of the Igbo Apprenticeship system popularly called ‘Imu-Ahia’ or ‘Igba Boi’, which literally translates to ‘to learn market/trade’ or ‘having a master’ respectively.  A friend of mine from Nnewi told me that his father asked him and his brother if they want to further their education into the university? He said yes but his brother said no that he wants to start trading. His father gave his brother a little capital and sent him to school abroad and he even did his masters afterwards. Upon coming back to Nigeria, no job waiting for him and he has to find something doing so he went to his brother. His brother rented an apartment for him in Lagos and bought a car for him which would enable him become an uber driver pending the time he finds an appropriate job. Apparently, his brother’s business has shown an exponential growth over the years, he used five years to learn trade and grow his business into a conglomerate. The lesson here is not to study or further your education, as a matter of fact, he had to partner with his brother because had the intellectual knowhow of how to grow a business even bigger. But knowing all these without an opportunity in Nigeria is a total waste. One needs to be industrious in nature with or without education just like people in Nnewi. Most billionaires from Nnewi didn’t make it to higher education, most stopped in senior secondary or even first school leaving and can’t speak good English but who cares. Money is a universal language, most Chinese business men in Nigeria can’t speak good English but they communicate well enough to create good deals.

TVC ran a documentary about how they were able to achieve the feat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCrUVZI_gTI&pbjreload=10

The Igbo people in general have made it their thing to do business because of their financial awareness. They venture into different types of businesses with little or no vast knowledge and learn as they trade. Some people venture into a particular business because they heard it brings more profit but most people know the business first before they venture into it. They mostly trade which means ‘buying and selling’ in Nigeria. The importation business has been the trademark of Igbos for many years but some Igbos have been innovative about it especially people from Nnewi. Innoson started importing motor bikes spare parts to couple in Nigeria and made more gain while selling with reduced price, that way his competitors had nothing on him. Many Nigerians also do these importation because there are many essential goods that are not produced in Nigeria and that’s an opportunity to make money. Nigerians import from countries like China, Singapore, Japan, United States, Germany, United Kingdom, etc then paying a huge amount of money for shipping those goods to Nigeria.

During the 21^st century, Igbos have grown into production of most essential products in Nigeria. Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing has gone into manufacturing of cars, trucks, buses and more to cut the price of shipping vehicles in Nigeria. Unfortunately the Nigerian system is not ready to fully welcome it now as they still prefer the foreign branded vehicle over the locally made vehicle. This is a major challenge most manufacturers are facing in Nigeria today and can be discouraging but that’s another spirit of Igbos in Nigeria, especially the ones from Nnewi, they never give up. They always find a way to penetrate into the market. Many Igbos are the owners of the products and services you’re using today but I seriously doubt you know about it. They have figured a way to penetrate into the Nigerian market without criticism or disregard. 21^st century Igbos are manufacturing products like vehicles, wire cables, smartphones, automated ventilators, fans, wristwatches, plastics, chemicals and so on. You cannot underestimate the industrialization spirit of the Igbos because they keep innovating their ideas without publicity. As a matter of fact, you don’t know many of them because of lack of publicity. Most rich Igbo men are not on Forbes list for a reason but that’s a topic for another day.

Let’s take it back a little to better understand the Igbos. Before the civil war, the Igbos were in charge of many industries and government positions. They were above all more than any other tribe in Nigeria but that went into demise when they lost the civil war and they took everything from them. Now this is the interesting part, after the civil war, Igbos had little or nothing to survive because the government has rendered biafran pounds useless. However, the harsh 20 Pounds Policy of the Nigerian government made the adoption of the system inevitable as poverty hampered business funding. Their investments has been either destroyed or taken away from them and no government position for any Igbos. It was devastating and not conducive to grow knowing that your host don’t want you to grow.

The Igbos started building again by simply trading which they called “buying and selling” in Nigeria. With time they started getting on their feet again and building up a trade into a conglomerate. Anybody that has done business knows that it’s not easy to start from nothing, even the richest entrepreneurs we know today didn’t start from nothing, they had a little capital and more or less support from investors but Igbos literally started from nothing after the civil war. It takes a certain level of industrialization in a certain group of people to be able to carry this out over the years.

In Nigeria, you hear a certain saying “Igbos too like money”, do you know who else likes money? The Chinese. They love money so much that they’ve turned their country into an economic hub and industrialization hub. China economic growth blew exponentially over the last 100 years and they’re now rooting for world power if care is not taken. People who criticize industrialization couldn’t criticize China no more because they saw what it can do for a nation.

So back to the topic, if the love of money is the motivation, so be it as long as one don’t do anything illegal to get it. Igbos started building from nothing for a period of 30 months through business and apprenticeships to pull out of poverty immediately after the civil war. Let’s talk about apprenticeships, specifically Igbo apprenticeship. Learning a trade has always been the norm with the Igbo people of South-East Nigeria. An Igbo person believes in controlling his financial ‘destiny’ and the best way to guarantee this was through commerce and venturing into business.

The apprentice is often closely related to the master but is not slavery. They do not travel home during festivities to their family without the consent of the master even if the master and family are in the same city.

Igbo apprentices also do other domestic chores in the house like car washing, ironing and cleaning whenever they are not in the shop. They are appraised based on not just work ethic while learning and growing the master’s businesses but on performance in non-business related areas like respect for the master’s spouse/family etc.

At the end of the apprenticeship, they are compensated with a take-off fund which they use for shop rent, goods, equipment (if needed) and in some cases, accommodation for a given period of time.

This does not in any way prevent collaboration with the master despite being a competitor. In fact, in some cases due to the apprentice’s weak buying power, a master can assist with goods procurement for a former apprentice to help them reduce overhead importation/exportation cost.

This might kill your wonder about the reason for the high success rates of the ‘Imu-Ahia’ system despite the absence of structures and processes like Seed Rounds, Equity Splits, Venture Capital and so on.

Thinking of the equity splits or venture capital with an Igbo apprentice will be a hard adjustment to make because that defies the traditional way they learnt business and they will see it as debt. Now they are the best candidate for any venture capital or investment platform because they will surely deliver and having all the services the venture capital and investment platform have to offer, they would even succeed more than projected but that’s a topic for another day.

Thanks for reading this, kindly leave a comment below