Founder and Chancellor of Enugu State-based Maduka University, Dr. Maduka Onyishi, has said that his rise from the humblest of beginnings to his current status was nothing short of extraordinary grace and favour of destiny that found his labour worthy.
Speaking while receiving the 2023 Vanguard Newspapers Most Innovative Investor Award in Lagos, recently, Onyishi, who is renowned to be Nigeria’s mass transit catalyst given how he used his Peace Mass Transit Limited to revolutionise the sector, disclosed that he failed many times in his quest for entrepreneurial success but remained determined in the face of odds.
He recounted: “I sincerely make no pretence of being smarter in my businesses, nor do I assume to be better competitive, because my honest circumstance was a pretty rough road for survival, very basic in scope and limited in capacity, as it were. There was no hint of aspirations to what has become, nor any label of exclusive personal hard work other than the grace of God that found expression in the trust people had for me.
“What I always acknowledge and wish to repeat here is that unspeakable grace met me at the point of toil and sweats, and took hold of my destiny without any resistance. It’s just that simple; because I have had several losses, made mistakes, failed again and again, but never obliged failures to conquer my humbly determined focus. I had no godfather to fall back on, so giving up was never an option. Nor any access to sources of finance other than the daily grind to live what I am and see what will be.”
He stated that there are three major markers in his business struggles that he would never forget.
His words: “One was in Tudun Wada Kano, when a Ghanaian woman, Mercy Nana Dufie, gave me money to keep for her in an Ovaltine container. I simply dropped it under my bed securely for her. When she came back after some months to take it, she shouted that I gave her exactly the same money she gave me. ‘Did you not trade with it?’ she screamed; totally surprised. I protested naively that she told me to keep the money for her, not trade with it. She went around spontaneously telling all the Ghanaians in Tudun Wada Local Government then that she had seen one man in Nigeria who didn’t touch money given to him for safe keeping. Patronage for my clothing business spiralled such that I saved N12,000 between 1987 and 1989 and quietly left for spare parts business in Kano city.
“Secondly, while there in the city, one Alhaji Mohammed Lawal Kurfi gave me spare parts on credit to pay back after selling. I travelled and sold it in Lagos and returned the money in bundles of cash in a carton. Of course, I didn’t have a bank account then because of how much my capital was. Alhaji Lawal marvelled on seeing his complete money in cash and confessed it was his first experience of such in that business. He promptly told all his colleagues who import spare parts that he has seen someone who pays completely and in cash for goods given to him on credit. Again, out of my ‘naivety’, in not recycling his money to multiply returns as others ‘smarter’ did, my patronage exploded. I suddenly became very important as the reliable middle man there. Expansion was inevitable, and it came forcefully.
“The third and most amazing of all was when I became a transporter and went to buy a new vehicle from the popular Ineh-Mic Motors in Lagos. After paying, I was short by N200,000.”
I pledged to redeem it in two weeks. He kindly obliged me. Before the two weeks were due, I paid it off without any phone calls or reminders. And I didn’t think anything of it, except being my natural self, as l had promised, fearful about the shame of a possible let-down in future. Because of that single act, Dr. Mike Inegbese, the owner and a major car dealer then, voluntarily, without my asking, commenced giving me double of any cash purchase orders I made. If I paid for two, he would give me four; if four, he gives eight; if 12, he released 24 vehicles to me without any form of collateral, no agreement and no witnesses. He made it plain when eventually I managed to ask him much later that I was his first customer who paid off his credit grace on time, without asking or tedious follow-ups.
“I hardly knew these people nor had a leverage upon, other than doing things the way I knew and believed, as I was taught by my mother. I went ahead to grow my number of vehicles on the road to a record 4,000 units without ever borrowing from banks as was the trend, because that man found better collateral in a ‘risky personal trust’ that was never betrayed at all. He later continued supplying me vehicles even without my orders, and when I screamed, he asked me to relax and pay him later. So, how can you receive such grace and favours and claim you did them on your own?”
He, therefore, advised that people should strive to have something that would attract grace upon them, adding that “in my case, I believe it was trust, thrift and humility.”
The citation of Onyishi by the newspaper revealed that its board of editors were actually drawn by irresistible curiosity to know how “a peasant trader, bus conductor, bus driver, became a spare parts dealer, and founder of the most disruptive player in the Nigerian mass transit ecosystem, through his Peace Mass Transit company, that ply all land routes in Nigeria and beyond.”
The citation added: “Not content with that comfortable money spinning terrain, he again leaped into the conservative and complex frontier of the academia as a promoter and founder of a university, complete with a feeder college, amazing facilities and fully accredited faculties, operating seamlessly as a generation next citadel of learning.
“Yet again, Dr. Maduka elbowed his way into the corporate realm without noise, as a consummate investor in blue chip companies that see him today sitting as Board Chairman of the only quoted leasing and maritime company in Nigeria, C&I Leasing Plc; a Director of May and Baker Pharmaceuticals Plc, Director at Globus Bank Ltd, and owner of other thriving businesses. Grace and destiny indeed, couldn’t have been more explicit than this.”
