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Fr Angelo Chidi Unegbu (12.02.2022)
Are you a business man or woman whose business is not moving fine? Before you begin to think of going to the village to pay someone to start boiling pot (_oke-ite_) for you, have you thought of re-planning and re-strategizing your business, studying the economic policies of your country of abode and the legal challenges in order to know their effects on your business?
Before setting up your own _oke-ite_, have you thought of speaking with and listening to your customers? Have you thought of acquiring more marketing skills through offline or online business trainings? Have you thought of marketing your goods online or being creative with your adverts? Have you thought of examining your customer care attitude and principles?
Have you checked if you need to rebuild trust? Some of us are untrustworthy and can lie for Africa. How can your business grow when business partners cannot trust you and when you hardly keep to promises? Before you begin to do _oke-ite_ have you checked if really business is your calling? Or do you think that business is just about buying goods and displaying them? Not everyone can do business and not everyone can be a C.E.O, oga or manager of a business.
Business is about planning, strategizing and maneuvering through challenges and problems. It has nothing to do with magic, sorcery and banking on luck. What you get is what you put in. It is a physical and not a spiritual exercise. It is silly to believe that to resolve business challenges that what you need to do is to visit your village and ask someone to start boiling pot for you. The same is applicable to those who think that paying of tithe or sowing of seed in a Church can open economic doors.
None of the values you enjoy today was built by sorcery or magic but through hard work and perseverance. Even the language you speak today was not developed by the boiling of pots but though hard work. Imagine what the society would become if everyone decides to solve his or her problem today through _oke-ite_? Imagine that every doctor, teacher, mechanic, carpenter, priest or hotelier begins to set up his or her own _oke-ite_?
Do you think that there would have been any school, university or research centre today if _oke ite_ was ever used in solving any single human problem? How many pots did the Chinese and Americans boil to make their nations the economic hubs of the world today? Did our forefathers solve any of their economic problems through _oke-ite_?
Do we even realize the long-term effect that such nasty and imbecilic mentality will have on the psyche of the society and the citizens? The Igbo race did not become one of the most business-inclined tribes on earth by sorcery and magic but by diligence and hard work. The history of evolution makes it clear that the human intellect develops faster by solving problems. What will be the situation of our intellect in years to come if we all take to _oke ite_? Of course, we shall end up as morons and imbeciles?
I will leave you with one of the wise sayings of our Igbo forefathers: “ihe amuru amu ka ihe agworo agwo.” (A skill mastered by training is far better than a quick-fix medicine.)
