Authors-choice: Hope & Revival

It is hard to find good things to write about Nigeria that is why I never let an opportunity pass if one ever presents itself. Scrolling through twitter this morning, I came across a clip from Reuters about Ukamaka Okoye, a Nigerian woman who fabricates parts for motorcycles using smelted aluminum vehicle parts from the scrap yard.

According to her, she used to work as someone’s secretary in computer firm, but one day, an opportunity came for training as an auto part fabricator at Nnewi and she volunteered to attend and instantly fell in love with auto fabrication technique. Wasting no time, she set up a small factory run entirely by hand and together with her husband they began manufacturing and today they have employed some more women to help them churn out about 1000 motorcycle clutch pads and disks a day.

Her office is no air-conditioned rose smelling upscale flat, but a rented shack, hot and smoky, with blasting furnace adding to the sweltering heat of the sun blazing down her back as she works, yet she is working and working very hard, bearing witness to the truth contained the time worn refrain that when the going gets tough only the tough gets going.

In a time when countless young people are falling into hopeless despondency, Ukamaka Okoye shines the light of hope, and providing an example that if you are ready to work hard, there is no obstacle you cannot overcome and nobody has any reason to give up hope or worse fall into the temptation of engaging in crime like many young people are doing. Here is the spirit of initiative and industriousness that Nigeria and indeed the rest of Africa need to lift her from the putrid gutters of poverty.

Ukamaka and her husband have triumphed over lack of electricity Power, pipe borne water and every possible amenity that any one can imagine, and built a manufacturing firm, creating wealth and contributing their fair share in developing their country. I hope that this exposure and recognition she received from Reuters and the rest of the world would encourage investor to come forward and give her help to expand her business into a modern industry, as I know would be the case where she living in any other country other than Africa.

Yes, what a man can do, a woman can do even better. Ukamaka is a good model to many indigent young girls often tempted into prostitution and selling their bodies to survive. Ukamaka story shows that there is another way, a better way. Honest and dignified work is always available to those willing to find them, and who courageously embark on their dreams no matter the odds. Lastly the Nigerian government would do well to recognize and support Ukamaka, and more importantly study her method of enterprise so that they can guide the teaming mass unemployed young people roaming streets without direction, to emulate Ukamaka’s enterprise in other to carve a better future for themselves and the Nation.

https://reut.rs/36lZaHU