MY GRANDMOTHER- Entrepreneour Per Excellence.

Hello friends, do you know that I grew up with my grandmother between age five to sixteen? Yes , that is the truth. It was the most wonderful years of my young life. I loved my granny and she was the best grandmother one could dream of. She slept in the Lord August, 2000. May she continue to rest in the bossom of the Lord. I have many lessons to share from my grandmother's life, but that will be enough for a book in the future.

What I want to express today about my grandmother is a virtue that she had and I never gave her the credit until after her demise. She was an unknown academician, though, she never entered the walls of a University but she had the wisdom of a Professor.A short story of an event will make this more explicit:

When I finished my Teacher's Grade 11 College in 1985, automatic employment was no more possible with the government. In fact, there was no teaching job for my colleagues until late 1987.

My grandmother called me one day and advised me to go and establish the type of my uncle's vocation. My uncle is a concrete block maker. He had a block making industry. I told the granny that she should wish me well for better thing not to be a block maker; after all, my uncle did not go to school well and we that are educated should get office job and grow our career to become top executives in companies or government ministries or parastatals.

She never stopped telling me that what you do for yourself is better than serving somebody. I did not learn her entrepreneurial wisdom she was trying to impact on me until fifteen years later.   I needed less than N1200 (about $594 then) for the establishment of the mini block industry then. Take note of  the value of N1200 in 1986 and see how bad our currency today had plummeted

What then happened fifteen years later? My eyes were opened. This time not by my grandmother, but by my University Professor. I was in my MBA class in year 2001. The course is Entrepreneur Development. My Prof. told us how it is dangerous and suicidal in today's Nigeria to live as salary earners and be waiting for retirement after thirty five years.

He delved into various indicators and research findings that had been carried out in the past, like mortality rate among Nigerians, , failed businesses, old age efforts to start being an entrepreneur, and other reasons why it is difficult to start thinking of new business at around age sixty and above. Apology to our senior citizens. with due respect; but we are living witnesses to most of our senior citizens that collapse and die while queuing for their pensions.

It then dawned on me that my grandmother was  an unrecognized Professor. She was called to rest just eleven months before at the ripe age of one hundred and twenty years.

I remembered my Professor of Entrepreneurial Development. I remember my good grandmother , the unsung Prof., the Entrepreneur Per Excellence.

Who says only the academicians are the learned? Ask Henry Ford.

Please leave your comments to this post.  catch you all tomorrow.