1. Cosmas Maduka is a billionaire and everyone knows. 2. He is the husband of Charity, hence the name of his business is Coscharis. 3. Cosmas is successful in what he does and he traced the origin to his passing through the famous Igbo Apprenticeship System. 4. Many, notably the Igbo, have opined that the Igbo apprenticeship system is superior to majority of the world's top business schools because it has churned out a large number of billionaires. 5. In fact Cosmas Maduka said that if you give a graduate of university 500k and a graduate of Igbo apprenticeship 500k, the former will misuse the money while the latter would transform the money to multi million naira business in a few years. This may be true but is the comparison necessary? 6. The philosophy of university education is not create billionaires. Business schools are set up to produce managers. Starting and owning a business is entrepreneurship and indeed some business schools have started entrepreneurship MBA but in reality the process of starting a business is not an exact science or art. 7. For instance and let me digress, I was recently reading a chemistry textbook by Osei Yaw Ababio and in the introductory chapter, I saw a discussion of the scientific method. This is the process used by scientists to investigate reality. Now under the discussion of "Hypothesis " which is basically an informed guess that an investigator must test with observations, Ababio stated that generating hypothesis can only come from "creative insight ". I was taken aback . 8. What is the word "creative" doing in a science textbook? Not to talk of "creative insight "? So basically Ababio is telling us that we need inspiration or imagination or what the religious call "revelation " to come up with hypothesis ? Let me return. 9. The same way in business, entrepreneurs profit from satisfying the needs of customers. But sometimes how do customers even know they need something? Not to talk of an entrepreneur knowing what customers need. Naturally the entrepreneur will also adopt the scientific method of investigation and deploy "hypothesis " . But for him to come up with hypothesis, he needs his creative insight , hunch and intuition. In science, tested and proven hypothesis becomes a theory and in business, tested and proven hypotheses becomes strategy. But the this is not enough, after the discovery of strategy of profit, the apprentice needs capital. The capital is not to test ideas but to multiply what has been discovered in the world. 10. That is what usually happens during the 10 long years of Igbo apprenticeship system. It is a "scientific" process on its own. The system cannot work without disbursement of capital at the end of training. Additionally, despite the garrulous talks, the system cannot be democratized. Why? A democracy of the apprenticeship system leads to vanishing profits. Furthermore what about capital inadequacy? Apprenticeship or no apprenticeship, it is the destiny of 90 out of 100 businesses to collapse within three years of starting and operation. Nothing can change that and mostly the problem is capital inadequacy. I'm yet to see any Master that will give enough capital to a beloved apprenticeship to start. Even Cosmas recalled that his master gave him not the agreed amount to start but a pittance. Because of this, we are in Africa and all I can say is that we know what the desperate do to form the needed capital to win the business war. 11. So what is my point? My point is that the Igbo apprenticeship system is inherently unscalable even for the average Igbo man. We need something that will not be afraid of democratizing employment of factors, consumption and adequate standard of living. I think Tony Elumelu has more humility than Cosmas (and that is another thing you get from University education) by noting that luck played a signficant role in his business story. As a result of this , he created the Tony Elumelu Foundation as an institution that is aimed at democratizing and institutionalizing luck in business. We will get lucky !
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