Excuse Me, Mr. Self-Employment Advocate!
The last decade has witnessed a surge in all manner of motivational talk in Nigeria. Hundreds of seminars and thousands of articles have been churned out by the motivational talkers and the frenzy continues to gain momentum. This is good, as everyone surely needs motivation.
One of the most common subjects of such talks is entrepreneurship/self-employment. Good subject. I believe it is good to be self-employed and seriously craves being one. The benefits of owning one’s business are pretty obvious: you are in full control of your resources (time, finance, etc), you share all the rewards. Fine point.
Owning one’s business is clearly one of the best goals a person should desire to achieve. It even makes you exercise your brain more. Most of the richest people in the world own their businesses, their brands. Aliko Dangote owns Dangote Group (although being a PLC, he doesn’t have 100% ownership); Mike Adenuga owns the Adenuga empire; Michael Dell owns Dell Computers; Bill Gates owns Microsoft; Mark Zuckerberg and friends own Facebook, etc.
These guys are bottomless moneybags. No disputing that. They have done their selves some good by coming up with some ideas and making money from them. The entrepreneurship advocates therefore have in them fantastic examples to draw from in their self-employment sermonizing. But that is where it ends.
The self-employment preachers in Nigeria, good as their intention is, are however beginning to go off the mark. And this is where my problem with them lies. There is a dangerous trend of demonizing paid employment in the thriving business of self-employment advocacy. Every Ade, Ada and Adamu that can string two words together has turned into self-employment preacher and the fad is to demonize paid employment. Being in salaried job, to them, is slavery.
First, our self-employment advocates oversimplify things and sometimes when you listen to them or read what they write, you begin to wonder why they are not Dangote themselves. To be sure, I don’t have a problem with self-employment preachment; indeed, it is my ultimate goal too to own companies and businesses too, on full time basis. I also hold that being self-employed, if one gets it right, is better than being under someone else’s control. But is everyone cut out for being self-employed? Capital NO.
Victoria Island – corporate capital of Nigeria
This is why I think in the process of advancing their advocacy, salaried jobs should not be demonized. I don’t believe salary job is necessarily slavery. I also don’t hold that you cannot be rich with paid job. You may not be as rich as Dangote or Adenuga, but if you work hard to become CEO of Shell Nigeria (a salaried job), for instance, I doubt your next generation can ever be poor. Not everyone will be as rich as Dangote, but with a dint of hardwork, becoming a manager in a decent company can earn you decent saving, and with sensible investment (preparing for retirement), you can live a satisfactory post-salary life.
I have seen some young graduates and prospective graduates vowing they can never work for anyone and they will go straight into entrepreneurship. Good one, if you have the idea. But managing businesses most times goes beyond the theories we read in those materials and the smooth talk of the self-employment advocates. Apart from the constraint of raising capital to fund the idea, there is an even more critical factor in management. Most times if you have never worked for any other person, you may find it difficult in running your own businesses.
Fola Adeola and Tayo Aderinokun founded GTB after working for other banks; Aig-Imoukhude and Herbert Wigwe apprenticed with GTB before breaking out to found Access Bank. Most of these guys cut their management teeth working for someone else. This is why I hold that learning by being under someone else’s employ is most times helpful. Of course, I have not said it is necessarily the case. It is very possible to go straight into one’s business after finishing school and still go ahead to make it big. Aliko Dangote is an example here. He started straight away.
So, oh you self-employment preacher, before you tell me I am a slave for choosing the path of salaried employment (for now), know you that the CEO of Shell is a ‘slave’ to Shell. I want to be one.
I do appreciate self employment preachers, but it is crystal clear that all of us cannot be self employed.We youths should understand this fact.Jarus,I don’t mind be a slave as a CEO of Chevron too.Moreover,I sent you a mail for an advice, I have not heard from you.Thanks.Regards to the JAC team.
Sorry bro. Will get back to you.
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
Ok.Thanks
For you to be the CEO of Chevron, you must also have an entrepreneurial mindset. You actions and decisions must have positive impact on the company’s bottom-line, market share, competitiveness, deliver good returns to shareholders (unlike what Wale is doing to shareholders of OANDO) and other financial ratios.
Another truth told by Jarus again!
As a youth corps member, while in camp the NYSC management brought many of these self employment gospel preachers to us, many of them talked extensively telling us different stories – there’re no jobs out there& the only thing you can do is to be self employed. Fine, they were encouraging us but ironically, many of them lied to us. I remember one of them told us he do make #350,000 in ten minutes but by mere looking at what he was putting on there was no correlation at all. Funny enough, none of them will end their useless so called “motivational talks” without advertising/marketing their books – that’s their main aim is to sell books.
One may wonder how the NYSC management expect a corps member to save and start his/her business with the meagre #19,800 been paid monthly. I for one believes in self employment but it goes beyond what its preachers used to say.
Finally, as a graduate of Economics, my research project was on evaluation of the contribution of Informal sector to employment generation in Kwara state. After the research, I got to know that many of the so called self employed(Informal) are not living above poverty line and this is as a result of the fact that the environment is not business friendly as the basic infrastructures needed are either not in existence or short in supply.
I think entrepreneur and business owners need to be exposed to the intellectual aspect of running a business successful and building the business to last. That is why it is very difficult to find a successful indigenous business that is in existence for 60 years in Nigeria. I think Dangote will; break the jinx.
With right system and process in place and God on one’s side, an entrepreneur ought to succeed.
You are so right bro
The truth is most people want to be self employed so as to cut corners to achieve success, only few ones venture in for the right reasons. Many are simply trying to circumvent the basic tenets of hardwork,honesty,commitment,personal development etc.
A man not diligent in the informal areas of his personal life (and reluctant to develop himself personally) trying to venture into self employment, How do you explain this??
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Everybody can not be an entrepreneur, but everybody needs to have an entrepreneurial mindset. A mindset that identifies or anticipates needs, and tries to satisfies the the need at a profit. We also need to inculcate the entrepreneurial culture and value in the minds of our youth.
Instead of preaching entrepreneurship to everyone in the labour market, I think we need to preach, financial literacy, financial intelligence, financial independence and multiple steams of income.
In order to reduce unemployment in our country, I think every employed Nigerian with a minimum salary of N5 million should endeavour to have a micro or small enterprise that employes at least 5 Nigerians.
This Prof. of Agric. Economics who happens to be one of my Nigerian mentors in stock market invest , was able to build investment portfolio running into billions of Naira.
http://pmnewsnigeria.com/2013/06/05/an-incorruptible-professor/
Prof. Nwankwo another retired Prof. of Finance at UNILAG also became a Naira billionaire via the stock market. He was a director on the boards of various blue chip companies by virtue of his stock holding.
I also know a 40 yeras old Economics teacher whose net-worth via stocks and real estate will make a lot of bankers, stockbrokers or other people in the so-called hot profession to be envious, yet he has not retired to be a full time entrepreneur.
I think people need to identify their strength, become the best in whatever you do and create a profitable niche for your self.
My best line, “…..learning by
being under someone else’s employ is most
times helpful.”
Of course there is always an exemption for every thing, I strongly believe one has to be an apprentice before he can be “Oga at the top” in entrepreneur scheme. I presently is a paid apprentice in my place of work hoping to be an entrepreneur in future.
And you know the painful thing about these self employed advocates jarus, most of them are not practical entrepreneur. They read and download what they read. Ask them, “which business do you run Sir?” and they might not find answer to it. However, that is not general.