Now That I Have Discovered What Is Making Nigerian Entrepreneurs Die Young: By Mogaji Wole Arisekola.

Anywhere you go, Nigerians are relentless. They are majorly entrepreneurs. Many are hardworking, brilliantly creative and legitimately successful.

They love to build careers where none existed before, employ people and put Nigeria among the most successful countries in the world.In the face of hardship, our mothers have enlivened their entrepreneurial spirits in the interest of the nation’s economic survival—from selling corn on the street to selling akara or chewing gum. They are happy to be doing something, at least, to support their husbands and help raise the children.Unconsciously, an average Nigerian entrepreneur believes that Nigeria could be brought back to the path of economic prosperity if its citizens would embrace positive attitudes that would discourage over-reliance on oil.

Because Nigeria has all it takes to become a leader in food production and agriculture in general, but needs to find the passion to drive the process.In Nigeria, we have the land, we have the manpower, we have the climate, and we are known for our resilience and fighting spirit.Instead of sobbing and moaning about our oil misfortunes, we can and should focus our energy on the gold mine that agriculture offers.When I was young, if you read any obituary in the newspapers in the South-West, the citation would say that the deceased died as a businessman, CEO of this company or that company.Hardly would you read that he was a Permanent Secretary or Director-General of one ministry or the other.It was uncommon among the people in the South. So, if you were born in the South, your mentor would have been your parents because you would grow up learning the trade either from them or from their neighbours.

The most successful business entrepreneurs then were from the southern part of Nigeria. They had little interest in the politics of the centre and always played opposition politics.

The legacy that our parents were striving to leave behind then was education and entrepreneurial skills. Hardly could you look around without seeing someone in your neighbourhood setting up a trade that would employ another person.But behind all these successes, I discovered recently that entrepreneurs always develop hypertension and die young.I have been cracking my brain to know the cause of these sudden deaths.What I discovered will shock my readers.It is not a matter of bad government policy alone.

The hazard of unproductive staff has contributed to the death of many business owners.If you have hired a manager, it may turn out that the owner of the business will be the one managing the manager he employed.This has become a national problem: getting qualified staff or apprentices in any privately owned business in Nigeria today.

From the security man at the gate to the drivers and housemaids, Nigerians have moved from employing Nigerians to employing citizens of their neighbouring countries.

Employing some Nigerians to work for you is becoming like signing your death warrant through high blood pressure.It is so bad in the construction industry that security men hired to protect your property can sometimes be the same people stealing what you asked them to protect.You give somebody a job to watch over your property, and before you know what is happening, the person you employed to protect you has become part of the problem you are paying him to prevent.

When I decided to set up a hotel business, as usual, I sought an appointment to see Chief Anthony Ajibola Aribisala (SAN), a successful legal luminary and hotelier.What Chief told me about why so many hotels were being closed down because of the problem of bad staff was an eye-opener to me.I was wondering how Chief Bayo Adelabu was still looking so robust with all the problems associated with running a hotel business.Well, as Chief Anthony Ajibola Aribisala (SAN) advised me, you must not run a hotel business without having a second address.You must have a second source of income to support the hotel in case of the downtime usually caused by the staff of the hotels.Hmm, being an entrepreneur in Nigeria is like creating an avenue for people to come and eat without providing value for the service.Most entrepreneurs will learn how to cry in silence in the middle of the night without anyone knowing or hearing them.They cry when they realise that the Shylock bank officials are holding their jugular because of the loans they collected.

They cry when the business is not moving as expected.They cry when the workers they trusted are not delivering.They cry when they discover that the person they employed as a manager cannot manage even himself.

They cry when they have to constantly inspect, supervise, correct and practically do the work they employed someone else to do.To get a competent staff in Nigeria is like looking for water in a rocky area or the desert.Many entrepreneurs have died leaving huge, unserviced loans behind—not because they were financially reckless, but because their businesses were being systematically killed by the very people employed to help them grow.This is the part of the Nigerian entrepreneurial story that we hardly talk about.We celebrate the entrepreneur when he succeeds.

We celebrate the building, the hotel, the factory, the company, the fleet of vehicles and the jobs he has created.But nobody sees the sleepless nights.Nobody sees the blood pressure.Nobody sees the bank threatening repayment.Nobody sees the entrepreneur travelling from one office to another, looking for contracts, while the people sitting in his own office are not even serious about the business.

Nobody sees him returning home tired, only to discover that another staff has stolen something, abandoned his duty or simply refused to do what he was employed and paid to do.

This is why we need to start telling ourselves the truth.Nigeria does not only need good entrepreneurs.

Nigeria needs good workers too.We cannot continue to build businesses where the owner must be everywhere before anything works.

A business owner should be able to employ a competent person, give him responsibility and sleep at night knowing that the person will do the job.

The entrepreneur should not become the manager, accountant, security man, driver, supervisor and messenger all at once.If we continue like this, we are not only killing businesses; we are also killing the people who built those businesses.And perhaps this is one of the hidden reasons Nigerian entrepreneurs are dying younger than they should.

Mogaji Wole Arisekola writes from Ibadan.