"He who lives upon
anything except his own labour, is incessantly surrounded by rivals: his grand
resource is that servility in which he is always liable to be surpassed. He is
in daily danger of being out-bidden; his very bread depends upon caprice;
and he lives in a state of uncertainty and never-ceasing fear". William
Cobbet
In the ancient time each
family have a trade and each member of the family is initiated into
the family trade and business, then there is no joblessness and the
productivity of the society is higher than in the post
industrial age where people are sent to school to learn various theory and upon
graduation after many years of schooling you are certificated and
your chances in life depend on somebody called employer who may need your
certification or not. You are breed to be at the mercy of your employer. The
most unfortunate evil of schooling is that it take from your the power of
nature, the hardiness and human restlessness and ingenuity associated with
youth is taken from you and you are made a gentleman as
if gentlemanly is the hallmark of life. Children of farmer loose the
capacity to farm, children of blacksmith loose the skill and see it as a dirty
work, children trained with cloth laundry money see it as a basal work.
Airtel started the lay
off last year followed by Etisalat earlier this year and MTN Nigeria laid off
hundreds of their Engineers who have slaved out with them for ten years
in a jiffy, while working with them this young people live in the highest
comfort know to man, good houses, fine exotic cars, highbrow areas of the town,
stayed in the best hotels on assignment doing the bidding of the masters. In a
twinkling of an eye in a board meeting strategizing on how to sustain earning
and profitability people were axed away. This is not peculiar to MTN Nigeria it
cut across all cooperation, conglomerate, groups of company.
In the economic world we
all know that the return to capital is interest and capital
appreciation and the return to labour is income and wages which is a form
of capital also and more appropriation of capital to labour will mean higher
cost to the running of the business, so in other to minimize cost,
every method must be employed to keep cost down that is why organization come up with various invention and new
language to do away with people such as rationalization, re
engineering, outsourcing etc. All are ways of keeping cost down at the expense
of other factors of production.
What is the benefit of
working for ten years in an organization and you are disposed like a
disposable pack after you have eating the content. Within ten years of work the
organization believed that your wages will be on the higher side compared
to recruiting new graduates who can be trained to take over
from you. And they can conveniently do away with you. The sad
part of this is that you cannot go and start your own GSM company, or your
own Bank because of the capital outlay required of the company.
I believe the best for
any man is to think of a vocation whether your God giving talent if
you have one and develop it and make it a marketable commodities and if
you do not have any inborn talent you can learn a trade and sell a commodity
that is not available in your area. I used to envy a race in Nigeria though not
many of them have so much graduates in their clan and if they do it is just for
the paper. But they all have masters who they served for
a prolonged period of time where they acquired skill
and as freedom the master will start a new shop for them.
Imagined if you have
being selling just a product for the past ten years and you dedicate yourself
to the sales as you dedicate yourself to your organization. You would have
become a master in the business and have added other line of sales
business. So many Nigeria are busy applying for job day in day out, they
sit down with newspaper cutting advert here and there. Only to be
disappointed in not getting the required invitee for interview and some that
get invitation only learn to discovered that the position is filled up. The
advertisement is only a formality to fulfill all righteousness. And to share in
advert budget of the organization
My experience in the cooperate
world and the business world repeatedly confirm to me that self reliance is the
hallmark of life. Find a niche and fill it. The irony of life is that throughout
schooling period they never teach success skill, money skills are not taught.
When I look back at so many courses I went through I do imagined what on earth
I wasted my time on. University should be structured to impart practical, life skill
to student not theory of dead men as described by Henry Ford in his Autobiography
“It is not education just to possess the theories of a lot of professors”.
For a copy of Henry Ford
Autobiography visit http://manybooks.net/titles/fordhenryetext05hnfrd10.html.
There is no kidding entrepreneurship
is hard and it take everything you are made off you think of coordinating the
factors production, you think of the idea from conception to execution, to
sourcing the customer. You are also responsible for taking the loss and the
profit. Entrepreneurship is not the easy way out, but the tough option and not
the path of the least resistance. But after the baptism you become a master. It
is not for the feeble minded it is for the tough guys who can face disaster and
still laugh but once mastered. It pays dividend for life.
Friends whether you get
a job now or latter always put at the back of your mind that you are an entrepreneur.
There is no security in any job, the only security is that there is no
security. And entrepreneurship is the ways of the master. Stop and think of the
way to make life better for the society and think of helping solving the job
problem in Nigeria by helping recruiting some Nigeria as an entrepreneur. To
your success
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