African billionaire Cosmos Maduka dropped out of elementary school and became an apprentice at an age of seven, because of his father’s death. Currently he is the sole distributor for BMW and Ford cars in Nigeria and West Africa.
Also, Orji Uzor Kalu, who needs no further introduction, is the chairman of SLOK Holding and the Daily Sun and New Telegraph newspapers in Nigeria. He was excluded from the University of Maiduguri because of participating in a students’ protest. And Orji Uzor Kalu decided not to continue his further education and started his career.
I discovered through this meeting that, if you finish secondary school, get a university degree at 24, and join the workforce at 25, you will never financially catch-up with the 11 years you would have had, if you had started a business of your own at 14.
These days, before kids in Igboland get to 14, a large majority are given western education. They learn reading, writing, and mathematics. but they are not taught many important life skills like how to build big businesses, and make big money in schools.
Igbos love doing business but many Igbo graduates and non-graduates have no single skill in entrepreneurship. No idea on how to own successful businesses of their own.
The education system in the South-East doesn’t prepare Igbos to make their own way in business like it is done in other Eastern tribes China and India. But here, on the East of the Niger, students are required to learn formulas, and not to do any independent thinking.
The topics of making money and keeping it aren’t addressed at schools and universities in Igboland. Even so-called “Business Administration” departments and courses concentrate on management skills need for managing other people’s businesses and accounting for other people’s money but not the student’s own.
Is there any link between riches and university education?
All evidence seem to show that there isn’t. An Igbo university graduate may command more salary than a sixteen year-old apprentice at Onitsha Main Market, but when it comes to serious money making, university certificate isn’t a factor.
Never confuse the lack of university education of an Igbo drop-out with lack of financial knowledge. Igbo drop-outs who make a lot of money, enough to join the ranks of multi-millionaires have great financial education many Igbo university graduates don’t have. That’s why the best brains in the universities end up working for them, and the most beautiful girls on campuses end up marrying them also.
Most Igbo drop-outs may not have been taught what they know about money at secondary schools or universities, but there is another way of gaining financial education, which I call “School of Wealth.”
One reliable consultancy firm that runs the financial intelligence learning program known as school of wealth is www.financialempowermentconsul