As a graduate, I sold recharge cards, then became a motivational speaker – Foh
APRIL 27, 2013
Foh
| credits: File copy
| credits: File copy
Even as Nigeria battles with a serious unemployment crisis, a motivational speaker and author, Paul Foh, says the way out of it is for people to change their attitude.
Foh was the guest speaker at a forum organised by the presidential amnesty office where about 300 ex-militants of Niger Delta origin were handed various business packs in different vocations.
At the event, which took place in Lagos, the beneficiaries received welding equipment and other business tools.
The ex-militants had trained in Nigeria and some foreign countries in trades such as welding, fishing, sale of building materials and groceries.
Foh told the beneficiaries that they were ‘lucky’ to be receiving aid from the Federal Government, recalling that he had nobody to help him when he graduated from the university.
He said, “I was once like you. As a graduate, I sold recharge cards on the streets of Port Harcourt. You are even luckier, because at that time, I was alone with no help from anywhere. Nobody offered me any training or package as you are being given today.
“But because I had a positive mind towards life, today, by the grace of God, those companies whose cards I sold on the streets of Port Harcourt, invite and pay me to talk to people. When I tell MTN people that I once sold their recharge cards, they find it hard to believe me.
“For those of you who trained in South Africa, I have just been invited there. My flight tickets and hotel accommodation have been paid for as I am talking to you. What did they invite me for? To come and talk, that is all. I have been noticed through my books and exploits as a motivational speaker, a former recharge card seller. So if I can make it in life, my brothers and sisters, you can do better. All what you need to do is to go out there and vow to be a life changer.
“I want to meet you in the nearest future at say the airport and you tell me you are travelling to expand your business. If a former recharge card seller can become an author of best-sellers, you too say you can make it.”
One of the beneficiaries, James Akio, had joined some of his colleagues for a welding training tour of South Africa in 2011. He told Saturday PUNCH that what was uppermost in his mind was how to save enough from the monthly stipend which was coming from the amnesty office to settle down as an employer of labour upon his return.
He trained in pipeline welding in the former apartheid enclave and when he returned, even though he was promised by the amnesty office of a lifeline in his business, he took the promise with a pinch of salt.
“It was not that I didn’t have faith in the office, but as someone used to failed promises, I didn’t take it seriously even when we were asked to rent a business premises. Apart from the promise to equip our shop, they said they would help register our companies and help in whatever capacity but I had my misgivings. Almost one year after we rented shops, we were still banking on the promise by the amnesty office until last week when we were told to assemble in Lagos for the equipment.
“I still had my doubts until I entered this hall today and saw the heavy equipment. I cannot describe how excited I am because I had started regretting why I embraced amnesty in the first place,” he said.
As a young boy who could not go beyond primary school, Akio had joined the other restive youths of the region to attack pipelines to take what they claimed was their own but which the Nigerian government denied them. For years, he remained in the creeks fighting for his rights, taking part in oil theft and attacking foreigners, whom he considered as intruders.
Akio was not alone.
The event saw the amnesty beneficiaries who had undergone training in different fields in Nigeria and abroad, getting started in their various lines of businesses and skills aimed at taking them away from the path of restiveness to productive life.
Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta, Kingsley Kuku, who was represented by the Head, Reintegration Unit, Lawrence Pepple, described the ceremony as a symbolic showcase of the first in the series of robust empowerment programmes aimed at assisting the trained and equipped young men and women set up and grow small businesses.
He said these businesses would not only make them the new generation of entrepreneurs but lay a solid foundation to break the cycle of poverty and contribute to economic growth.
Kuku recalled that following the closure of disarmament, demobilisation of 26,358 young men and women enlisted in the first and second phases of the amnesty programme, his office had been grappling with the challenge of reintegration, noting that enormous achievements had been recorded in that direction.
He said that over 13,000 ex-militants had been sent to local and foreign training centres for various skills acquisition programmes and formal education and over 2,500 had been placed in higher institutions of learning in local and foreign colleges and universities where they had studied various courses such as Law, Medicine, Accountancy, Political Science, International Relations, Mass Communication, Building Communications Technology.
Kuku also disclosed that over 4,608 are currently undergoing various forms of skills acquisition training in Nigeria and other parts of the world in such areas as marine, heavy duty operations, welding, diving, agriculture, boat building, oil and gas technology, entrepreneurship, automobile technology, aviation, amongst others.
He said that over 690 women had been placed in specialised skills centres, with some already graduating in such fields as fashion designing, hotel catering, cosmetology and hair dressing and 174 offered direct employment in various governmental and private establishments within and outside the country.
He reminded the beneficiaries that with their empowerment, they were expected to stand on their own and be employers of labour and by that contributing to the development of the nation. He told them that the equipment and wares being given to them were to enable them grow their businesses and not to be sold.
He said, “Please do not sell the equipment and do not eat up all the monies you will make from engaging in your chosen businesses. Make a difference in your life and your community; grow your business so that when history will be written about the amnesty programme, you will be on the side of the success story.”
Speaking in the same vein, an official from the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, Mrs. Winifred Okulaye, warned the beneficiaries that the Federal Government would sue any youth that breached the terms of agreement of an empowerment package stressing.
She said, “Government is monitoring you. You should see this opportunity as government’s desire to help you become self reliant. If anyone attempts to sell the items we are giving you today, you will go to jail. So, if you know that you don’t need it or you think you want to sell them off and make quick money, you can reject them here now; there is no one forcing anyone to take the tools.”
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