How Igbo apprenticeship scheme shaped my life — Obiora Okonkwo, United Nigeria Airline boss

The chairman of the United Nigeria Airlines, Dr. Obiora Okonkwo at the weekend in Awka narrated how the popular Igbo apprenticeship scheme he embarked upon at a tender age helped to shape his life.

Delivering a paper at the national summit on ‘Repositioning the Igbo Apprenticeship Scheme for Sustainable Economic Development’ in Awka, Okonkwo, who was the governorship candidate of the Zenith Labour Party during last year’s election in Anambra State said the experience he garnered during the apprenticeship has been guiding his actions even as chairman of many corporate organizations.

He said: “I am sure some people may be wondering why I was chosen to deliver the keynote at this event. The simple answer is that the apprenticeship scheme and the Onitsha Main Market hold a very special place in my heart as that was where I had my first stint in business, albeit briefly.

“I was born in Gombe in December 1965 and was a baby in arms when my family, like all Igbos, fled the North as a result of the pogrom that ultimately led to the civil war.

“Following the war, my father, like every Igbo male, picked up the pieces and re-established himself at the Onitsha Main Market, specifically, at the fancy line, dealing on imported clothing materials like scarfs and wrappers, and later moved to the provision line on Sokoto Street in Onitsha.

” Unfortunately, some years later when I was 14 years old, he took ill forcing me to combine my secondary school education with managing the business and his apprentices. That meant I went to school in the morning and continued at the Main Market in the afternoon.

“That basic trading experience, in many respects, helped hone my business instincts and also instilled in me a deep sense of industry and hard work that have defined my life’s journey to date.

“Thus, when the UNIZIK Business School in July 2019 honoured me with the ‘Philanthropist of the Year Award’, it was only natural for me to try to give back by endowing a major research project on the future of Igbo entrepreneurship, drawing primarily from the role the iconic Onitsha Markets have played in the socio-economic transformation of the Igbo nation, particularly since the civil war; a phenomenon that best underscores the globally acclaimed ingenuity and indomitable spirit of our people”.

Okonkwo suggested that to safeguard situations where a graduate of an apprenticeship scheme finds it difficult to raise start-up funds, there is need for the establishment of Graduates/Apprenticeship Empowerment Initiative through which the government would empower the youths by tapping into a percentage of wasted state funds to create new entrepreneurs out of our youths.

That, he added, is the surest way to begin the quest to reinvigorate and transform the apprenticeship system in Igbo land to live up to its new promise of preparing the youths for greatness.

He said further: “We must prepare our youths for greatness through entrepreneurship  programme. We must prepare them to become self-reliant. We must prepare them to become independent and we must prepare them to become job and wealth creators in line with government emphasis on Entrepreneurship in our educational curriculum.

“This is a most urgent clarion call for, to do otherwise, is to watch painfully as our society gradually slide into anarchy as a result of the restlessness of our youths.

“The surest way to win back our youths from the crime world is to empower them with jobs which offers them hope and creates a new vista for their future. I am confident that a hopeful future will bring many youths back from the brink of criminality and with that a return to traditional values that many of us grew up with.

“As Igbo people, our culture taught us such values as respect for elders, hard work, the sanctity of human life, honesty, fairness and indeed the avoidance anything our society consider to be evil. But that is no more.

“Therefore, for us to pull through and bring back apprenticeship  to our youths, who hold the future of the Igbo nation in their hands, we must begin to restore those time-honoured values which saw our forebears become great entrepreneurs and the envy of the world through the apprenticeship system”. (Vanguard)