By Toby Chuks
Given the current socioeconomic hardship in Nigeria, business players in the commercial city of Onitsha gathered at a function tagged Onitsha Businesses Hangout organized by Onitsha Business School to brainstorm on business creativity, growth sustenance, and succession harping on the roles expected of people to play to be able to develop business, grow business, sustain business and ensure succession whereby the business continues to exist and flourish after the death of the founder. Among the notable players who participated in the program with the Theme: Defying Succession was the founder of GUO Group, Chief Godwin Ubaka Okeke, founder of Chrisoral Group HRM Igwe Chris Chidume Oranu, who is the traditional ruler of Omor in Ayamelum Local Government Area of Anambra State
Others include the founder of Onitsha Business School (OBS) Professor Olusegun, Shogbesan, the Director of Public, and Private Partnership on Business Development, Anambra State Investment Promotion Agency (ANSIPA), Mr Congo Emeka Ajekwu, Chairman/CEO Tiger Food, Mr Don Ebubeogu, a Board Member Onitsha Business School Mrs Ijeoma Ezeaso and popular highlife musician Chief Ikem Mazeli alias Material among others. The founder of GUO Group opened the floodgate of discussions by giving an account of his beginning shortly after the civil war echoing that he started the business with his father’s 404 Peugeot car which he used to start a transport business of conveying passengers to and fro Onitsha and Enugu
According to him the transport business flourished and going forward, he mustered the courage to approach the Barclay Bank which is now Union Bank to secure a loan to expand his business. He gave an account of the strategic ideas he applied to convince the bank to give him a loan adding that as a young man in his early twenties, he left his beard to grow so that he could look like an elderly person in other to convince the bank to give him a loan and it worked out for him. He went further to attribute his success to hard work, discipline, and foresightedness adding that he overlooked drinking joints and women to focus on the growth of his business.
On sustenance and succession of his vast businesses across the country, Chief Okeke popularly known as Onwa said he groomed his children along with his strategic ideas, discipline, hardworking and foresightedness to take over from him and they have taken over because he has retired and handed things over to them at the age of 75. He told the audience made up of mostly Youth that “there is a method you must have to apply to develop business, grow business and sustain business. The method is to have a clear view and understanding of the business you have to do and then you have to ensure that you discipline yourself against spending your money on things that will not bring back money in your pocket.
In his words, the founder of Chrisoral Group Igwe Oranu told the audience that he started his business with the philosophy of “work in progress” and to date, his business remains driven by the same philosophy of work in progress. According to him, there is no destination for the arrival of a business, business is a moving train with progress as its destination, the arrival is progress, so to grow and sustain a business requires focus on how to make progress. The Royal father explained that one needs to pick the right people and fix them in the right place to be able to grow and sustain business as a company. He blamed the failure of businesses on to lack of the right people adding that the most difficult challenge facing businesses in Onitsha is the lack of employable people.
Hear him further, “The most critical thing in business as a company is to lay hands on the right people, skillful people who are serious about doing the job, advancing with the job, and keeping the job in progress. The problem we have is that most people are not employable. People lack skill to the point that they are not useful enough to stand as building materials, you cannot use them to build anything and that is a problem, so let me thank the organizers of this program and use this opportunity to advise people here in particular and the public, in general, to endeavor to make themselves useful, make themselves building materials to build a business, build companies and again make sure you have dreams and then anchor the dream on something practical. Have a dream and try as much as possible to anchor it on something practical to be able to transform it into reality”
In his contribution, the founder of OBS Professor Shogbesan, told the audience that it takes good ideas or strategies, structuring, capacity, capability, and management to develop, grow, and sustain business from one generation to the other in succession. The OBS boss at first blush told the audience that it takes good ideas ahead of money to start up a business. In like manner, he maintained that it takes good ideas to adapt strategies, build structure, build capacity and capability to ensure good management and good monitoring for sustenance and succession of business adding that business is a living thing that requires many things to survive and most importantly to survive the founder. Among what it takes to ensure succession of business he said is structuring business into partnerships with people as stakeholders and shareholders of the business.
According to him, “building business structure by bringing people to partner or collaborate is the most possible best way for succession of business from one generation to another. One of the major reasons why businesses die with the original generation is that people establish businesses without structure whereby the business becomes a one-man show. I am of the view that companies that have died if they had a good structure embedded in partnership. One man cannot do it. A situation where everything ends on one table is not good for business survival and succession. A situation where one man makes a decision and takes a decision is not good for business survival and succession. Let me remark that bringing people to partner or collaborate with you in business doesn’t stop you from making progress and doesn’t stop you from being the owner of the business, you will still make progress and hold up as the business owner via your stake and your share in the business.
In her words, Mrs Ezeaso blamed the lack of business succession in Igboland on to lack of support from the government which also did not help in making government businesses survive into succession. Mrs. Ezeaso anchored her point on the failure of successive governments of the Southeast geopolitical zone to ensure the survival of giant development works put in place by Dr. MI Okpara during his days as the Premier of Eastern Region lamenting that the failure to keep Okpara’s giant development works in agriculture is the bane of the Southeast economy today. Hear her “Even government is guilty of failure of survival of business in Igboland because all the industries and firms put in place by MI Okpara have died. So it is a big problem both on the side of government and the private sector that needs to be dealt with and the time to face it is now, look at many companies that have died, and like Prof noted we need to learn how to work in partnership. I don’t think Premier Brewery would have died if there were partners well structured for operation”
Also speaking in response to some blame heaped on Government of Anambra State Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo as Governor, from the panelists and the audience for what they termed as lack of measures to help boost businesses in the State, the ANSIPA Director Mr Ajukwe revealed that Governor Soludo has enacted and implemented good measures including massive development of roads, boosting power supply, boosting security measures and all together ensuring enabling environment to boost businesses in Anambra State and not only, that the Governor is poised to develop more cities across the States in partnership with the private sector which will escalate businesses for the good people of the State.
Another panelist and popular highlife musician Ikem Mazeli gave a story of how he started adding that he chose highlife music because he saw that the major players in the industry such as Ostia Osadebe and Oliver D Coque were ageing and needed to be replaced. The Onitsha-born musician stated he became a musician by calling destiny because music runs in the family blood as both his father and mother are gifted with musical attributes. He advised the participants to endeavor to discover their destiny and work along with it noting that he has already started grooming his children in that direction. He added “One of the major things that can help people to achieve succession is destiny. Destiny works when the parents can groom their children in the same direction and I think that is what our Daddy and mentor Onwa GUO have been able to achieve. Onwa GUO was gifted for business and he was able to groom his children along the line”
In his holistic view of the program, the Chairman of Tiger Food Mr. Don Ebubeogu, who sponsored the program thanked both the organizers and participants for making the program a reality noting the program is timely and very interesting. He said that the topic of the day Defying Succession was well treated by the panelist and the audience and urged the participants to go home and digest how to put what they have learned into practice.