We need leader to motivate youths to make more money from talents than oil –Emeka Agba, solid minerals exporter, philanthropist By Aloysius Attah
Chief Emeka Agba is the chief executive officer, Agba Gold Nigeria Limited, as well as Tiger Base Global Limited. He has notable interest in solid minerals. He also owns other subsidiaries like Low Price Supermarket and carries on his philanthropic activities through Chief Emeka Agba Foundation.
In this interview, he draws attention to the need for the government and affluent individuals in the society to invest more in youths, to drive human capital development.
We are seeing increasing involvement of youths in yahoo-yahoo business instead of pursuing worthy careers. How can this be explained?
Many young people seem to go the wrong way, and that is the unfortunate trend that one is seeing. I think the cause is lack of proper orientation on what is important in life. They are doing it even while they are in school and this is what they do because of what they see among their clique but they don’t know that the money they make in such ignoble deals are peanuts. They are only making money that can give them a hand-to-mouth existence, but if they are given proper orientation which is what my foundation focuses on, they will realize that they can make a lot of money by ‘prostituting’ (investing) their talents. People who are selling their time are prostituting their time. They are not sex workers. If our people can learn how to ‘prostitute’ their time in a positive way, it will pay them heavily. Our businessmen should try and invest their money in some of these talent industries. We need a leader that will not only be in Aso Rock and checking how many barrels of crude oil have been lifted but a leader that must come from the grassroots, who knows that there is much money in human capital investment than in oil. Governments need to partner with people like us so that with approved proposals and authorization, we can scout for funds to do these things. Government doesn’t need to give us money, but they can endorse our programmes and officially approve it to enable us take it to different institutions around the world to finance such lofty ideals.
In what way are you contributing to harnessing the human ingenuity in the youth as you just suggested?
The answer to your question is basically why I set up the Chief Emeka Agba Foundation. My foundation is not just like some others that may say they are helping to give orphanages food. No. The foundation specialises in hunting for youths with skills, helping them to develop such skills and thereby make them to become better. It makes sure that our youths are not being wasted like what has been the order of the day in recent times. You see somebody after graduating from school, he is roaming the streets with a certificate telling you he can’t find any job, yet this young person is in his early 20s, has strong legs, big hand, huge and tall in size. That is unacceptable because raw talent is wasting away in that person. We have lots of gyms and boxing rings somewhere and when you engage such person in training in that line, you might have contributed to making a star. My foundation takes care of such person by putting him in a training gym or teaching him how to be a boxer and I can tell you that after two years, the person becomes a professional boxer and he can go to America and beat the hell out of their lightweight and heavyweight champions. This thing alone can fetch such young person millions of dollars in his pocket while some of his mates are wasting their time looking for jobs while others may be whiling away at Mgbuka Obosi market and Alaba where they are selling electronics. We have to look beyond the conventional training mechanism which the Igbo are known for because there is lots of money in human ingenuity. We have to learn how to convert the geographical diversities into economic opportunities. The geographical diversities we have here is the diversity of coming out of school and looking for jobs which have not favoured our youths. We have many aggressive young men today. In December 2021, we were supposed to have a boxing event in my country home in Akpu, Orumba South LGA, Anambra State […]
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