From Chidi Nnadi, Enugu

In Enugu State and the entire South-East, Mr Chukwuma Ephraim Okenwa, popularly called CEO from the initials of his name, is well known as a man with many parts.

Okenwa who is the director of Queen’s Mother School is an entrepreneur, media practitioner and youths and development expert.

Okenwa who derives joy in mentoring Igbo youths, especially in trying to make them future entrepreneurs  says the youths have lost some essential values, adding that he is afraid if the Igbo could raise the kind of entrepreneurs it has today in the future.

You inherited the school you are running from your mother, what was its state then and the improvement made?

We have made a lot of progress, 10 years ago before the school was handed over to me, the percentage of students was about 20 per cent of what it is today, and the staffing has gone up by 50 per cent of what it used to be; so we have made significant progress. I have been able to translate the vision of the school to something that conforms to global standards. And our institution today has become reputable that many want to identify with it.

What has your experience been like running a school?

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It has been wholesome; speaking from a general perspective, looking at the background of the students, normally a child tends to copy the knowledge of the teacher above that of the parents. However, when it comes to values, it all begins at homes, but in most cases we don’t have the values coming from the homes, so in that case we have the challenge of not just impacting on the students knowledge, but also ensuring that the right attitude, the right mindset needed for that particular information to actually thrive are there. So, anybody that is into the school system is not just there to impact knowledge, but also to add values that are lacking in our homes. Sometimes you see parents coming to interfere in the normal discipline in the school, like parents coming to challenge the teacher in a manner that is not good, I don’t think that is a good value that we would sustain. The children of today do not have that reading culture that was in the past encouraged by homes; today most homes have big sized television without having a single book on their shelf or a library; so there should be a paradigm shift to correct this.

At what point in time did you decide to go into the empowerment of the youths?

I would say that basically after my service year in 2007/2008, it was a melting point that exposed me to a lot of things. That was the first time I was leaving my family members since I was born. When I got there I discovered I had so much passion for the community where I was posted, it was a community known for violence, there was no form of development infrastructurally, no human capital not to talk of social capital. So finding myself in such an environment, my zeal was fired as I saw young men like myself who could not get education and they were literally doing nothing. So, I took it up as a challenge to educate them, I remember coming across a young man in that community, the Babangida community in Kogi State, who I told to consider starting up  a laundry service, but he said that people will laugh at him. So, the problem that he was actually having was ignorance because at that point he boldly came to me to beg for alms but was feeling ashamed to do a laundry business. He saw dignity in begging but did not see dignity in labour. So, I counseled him that there is dignity in labour than in begging and he understood it. So, when you talk about empowerment many people think that it is only by giving cash, no, there is the delivery of functional information to empower the mind. When you see any young person who is empowered mentally there is no way that person will sit back to say there is no work.

What has your experience been like since you started this?

It has been very interesting but the major challenge is on the young people themselves. I discovered that basically young Nigerians are actually trapped. If you are a young person and you want to go far the first thing you should do is to be humble because pride and arrogance are problems. Like I used to tell people the 21 days in the orientation camp for the NYSC cannot correct the indiscipline we allowed for four years on our university campuses. So, I think a great deal has to be done to ensure that culture of humility associated with university education should be there because these are the leaders of the country tomorrow. So, if they don’t have the right value like in the sense of humility and contentment, because an average youth is thinking of where can I put my N10 and it will automatically become N20,000. That was why on the advent of these Ponzi schemes over three million Nigerians got involved because everybody is looking for the cheap and easy way to make it; and it is not easy anywhere because in the process of trying to increase the little you have you will end up losing it entirely. So, we are advocating for the young people to shun laziness.

What do you think has made the Igbo youths to lose interest in taking up entrepreneurial duties unlike in the past, depending now on cheap ways of life?

It is all about family values, the man will say I am your father and a mechanic; you need to go to school and get the best of grades so you won’t end up like your father. So, when you have a situation where a parent speaks in like manner, making fun of dignity of labour, with that kind of mindset the child will grow up seeing some jobs as punishment. Entrepreneurship is a culture and to sustain it the culture of mentoring and apprenticeship has to be sustained. This has to be sustained by esteeming the very enterprise within the society. So, also like in the school system, you will see some teachers making fun of some professions, saying that if you don’t read well you will end up as a road side mechanic or seamstress, and others. So, this will make some children to think that if I have to be respected in society I have to be a medical doctor, lawyer, engineer, accountant, and so on. So, it can be amazing that if you enter into a class of 50 students, none of them is willing to be a teacher irrespective of the fact that they are being guided by a teacher. So, it is a function of what the society celebrates and I will advocate that our captains of industry of Igbo extraction should rise up to correct this by pooling funds together to encourage the youths who are struggling to eke a living, try and locate them to know the issues they are having, even if you don’t give them money, it could be tools or awards. Our big entrepreneurs should know that success without a successor is equal to failure. Our young people are the ones to sustain the enterprise of the Igbo man when the elders are gone. Most often I think who will be the Innoson of my own generation? Who is going to be the Coscharis of my own generation? When I look around I ask are there youths who are seemingly evolving such capacities and I would say unfortunately I have not seen much of that.