How to Dissolve 11,549,000
This piece was not submitted anywhere or once published anywhere. This is the first time it is seeing light of day since writing it. Written, 22nd August, 2017.
Imagine sending a reply letter to the sole proprietor of a successful business explaining why he should hire you. What you’re replying to is the only interview question he had for you: “what differentiates you from others?” Essentially, he’s asking, “have you two heads? Because I only employ persons with two heads.” This employer is in Nigeria, and so are you. And then you spend hours and concoct the perfect letter that paints you as this successful business monster with two heads. And then he replies, “If indeed what you’ve written is what you can do, why are you part of the 11.549 million?” You know exactly what he means. It’s the number that has haunted you since leaving school.
11,549,000. It looks like a prime number if you remove the three zeros at the back. It’s practically indivisible, insoluble. You’re a major at mathematics and statistics, and you love putting things in sets, make Venn diagrams of how they can best interact. You also love probability distributions. How many times can one throw a hoop at 11,549,000 pikes before it catches the chosen one? At the centre of the latest Venn Diagram and at the peak of the latest Probability Distribution you’ve drawn is one phrase: “Solution to Nigeria’s Youth Unemployment Crisis”. It has taken you four months after the reply to your reply letter found you to come up with this. It looks iron-clad. You smile when you see it. You’ve found the elusive panacea Nigerian youths have been searching for: how to get them all employed. And funny enough, it’s a very simple, common-sense thing we all know, but have been afraid to face and see through: entrepreneurship, and mutual business markets. You call your discovery: “How to Dissolve 11,549,000.”
Here are a few highlights of your innovative findings, each item representing a circle in your Venn Diagram, and each corresponding number representing its frequency on a probability distribution diagram. The probabilities themselves, representing attractiveness to the contemporary Nigerian youth:
· Haulage, especially rural to urban — 9
· Snail Rearing. In locales. He will need haulage from the youth running haulage from rural to urban areas — 9
· Snail-Based Fast Food Business. Obviously needs the other two. Ups the ante by making a mobile app for remote ordering — 9
· Independent Mobile App Development. Can extend his services to the snail rearer and haulage businesses through the fast food owner. — 9
· Public Relations Consultancy. The app developer needs people to download his app. He also introduces the others in the chain before him — 9
In between all these businesses, are many other behind-the-scenes independent businesses: rubber tyre testing and manufacture, engine coupling, farm tendering, water-provision, construction, computer literacy, real estate agency, independent journalism, and on, and on.
None of these businesses, in Nigeria’s climate, are without their risks. But that, and how interlocked they are, makes sure they are bound to succeed.
You attach these findings and send them back to your interviewer five months later. He asks, “what does 9 mean?”
“It’s a ranking,” you answer. “Over 10. Nine times out of ten, today’s Nigerian youth will choose these businesses. The one time they won’t is when nobody tells them how they work.”
You let your interviewer know you’ve found your own business to escape the 11,549,000 — telling them [youths] how they work.
