Lesson About Apprenticeship from Cosmas Maduka

4 min readDec 14, 2021

(All references are after the article)

The aftermath of my talking about the poor customer service at Air Peace yesterday was a peek into interviews he's conducted over the years. It was while doing this that I stumbled on an interview by Cosmas Maduka. For those who do not know him, Mr. Maduka is the Founder, President, and Chairman of the Coscharis Group. He is best known for Coscharis Motors, the sole wholesaler of BMW in Nigeria.

In that interview (1), Maduka talked at length about his time as an apprentice at Ebutte-Meta, Lagos, under his mother's younger brother. Coincidentally, Chidi Anyaegbu, the chairman of the popular logistics company, Chisco, was also doing his apprenticeship at the same location with his uncle.

A System with Indelible Marks

The interview reminded me again of the opportunities we keep missing with our educational system. In 2019, 719,000 people were participating in an apprenticeship in England alone. (2) In that same year, there were about 2.5 million students enrolled in higher education courses in the United Kingdom. (3) For emphasis, the United Kingdom consists of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

The same thing occurs in Germany. As of 2017, around 1.32 million people were in an apprenticeship (4), while around 2.7 million students were enrolled at German universities and colleges. (5)
The apprenticeship system has been so successful in a place like Denmark that several people go on to study advanced degrees without going to the university for their bachelor's. It's much the same in other countries. In Australia, 23% of those who complete vocational education continue their education, while only 19% do so in England. (7) It's not unusual to go to Melbourne Business School and find yourself in the same class as someone who went through the Australian apprenticeship system.

An average apprentice makes $18,000 a year in England. You may not know that apprenticeship has been around since at least the 12th century in medieval Europe before the British government stepped in in 1563 through the Elizabethan Statute of Artificers to build an institution around it. (9, Page 3) It was not a radical policy that was brought in from the "outside" to transform their society. It was already in existence and only needed to be brought into that time and age to enable even more people to benefit from it.

Localizing the System

One of the things I got from reading Adewale Ajadi's book "Omoluabi 2.0" is how several of our indigenous systems can be transformed into world-class institutions if only adequate thought is given to them.

I have said that we cannot develop the country through tokenism, i.e., getting international development agencies to take on tasks that should be done by the state. They will move the needle a bit, but not nearly enough. BusinessDay reported last month that International Breweries, through Hero Premium Lager, is offering N50 million worth of seed capital to promote the "Igbo Apprenticeship System." (10) They will run the campaign from September to December 2021, and it will be open to individuals who are 18 years of age and older. While laudable, there are already holes in this "Igba Boi" scheme. There is no country worth looking up to in terms of the apprenticeship system that depends on corporate goodwill for vocational education. It has to be a system driven by public policy that would attract top companies the same way companies like Volkswagen, Bosch, and Siemens are plugged into the German apprenticeship system. (11) The Germans have standardized the system such that there are currently 330 occupations that require formal training, and 400,000 German companies offer vocational training positions. (12)

But don't be surprised if a policymaker sees this piece and then goes ahead to lobby for bans of all kinds (the magic word here is "ban") to establish apprenticeship systems across the country. Yet this will be the wrong way to go. Nigeria is a diverse country. There are several nations in it with diverse cultures. If it's the Igbos that have succeeded thus far in the system, the program, even if it's a pilot, should be concentrated in Igboland.

People often ask me what I mean when I advocate for restructuring and true federalism. This is one of the things I mean: Allowing regions to have the liberty of making improvements to systems that have served them well in the past.