Quote from Nwafor Merciful on May 8, 2019, 12:26 PM

There's a common tradition in Nigeria among business owners, predominantly practiced by easterners.

A young boy (it's for males alone) goes to learn a trade under his master after high School, some even begin earlier than that. He serves his master for an agreed period, usually between five to eight years. He learns the nitty-gritties of the trade or skill and is expected to become well grounded in it, increase the general profit to at least half of what he should be paid. So much is expected of him; he's expected to be of a good behaviour and living out proper business ethics. His final year is usually an injury time. His boss is on the look- out for a fault, if he's the cunning type and the apprentice is bubbling with dreams.

If both the master and his servant maintains good attitude till the last day of his stay. He settles him with usually a huge sum of money. We call it 'settlement'.

Now this is the part where things are classified. The apprentice steps into the world with that 'capital' . I personally have observed different kinds of them:

•The Yankee type believes he has been suffering all through and that greener pastures lies overseas. He uses the money to pursue visa and travel documents. Let me try not to predict the end of each of them, save for the last.

• The conventional type follows the normal tradition, everyone expects him to start up a business exactly like the type he just learnt. So he sets up one and begins from the scratch.

• The ambitious type is ready to make money and leave poverty in any legitimate way so he uses part of the money in solving a huge problem in his family. He's afraid that expenses is about to swallow the whole money so he quickly puts it into a business, mostly likely a different one than the former because he believes that business will replenish his money faster.

•The big man type is very likely to have been stealing from his master. On his freedom, he 'invests' the money on land, cars and houses. He begins a petty business very happy with himself to have achieved something tangible.

•Now here comes the one I call the wise type. I'm not sure if it's a good thing but I love the idea. He has laid down business plans prior to his settlement. As soon as he payment, he takes out a quarter, then he puts the money away to a financial institution where it could be appreciating.  There are sonmany ways to do that. Then with the quarter, he begins a business for himself, he begins a side business too where he hires out tools on payment for the usage, in essence he gets people to work for him and give account.

There are so many parts of this man that we can't dissect completely but I know that he's the successful businessman!