Photograph — Uzodinma Iweala

About 90 percent of the traders in Nigeria’s spare parts business acquired their skills through mentorship and training. At Otto market, in the Lagos neighborhood of Ebute Metta the middle aged Igbo men who work as dealers have created more than just jobs. They’ve created a culture.

Driving down the exceptionally narrow and unpaved Willoughby Street in search of a parking spot, it is difficult to concentrate on the two tasks at hand: finding the particular spare parts shop that will have what you need, and of course navigating between bikers and street hawkers who behave like they own the road.

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A street in Otto Spare Parts Market, Ebute Meta, Lagos Photo Credit: Uzodinma Iweala

This is one of the busiest Honda spare parts markets in Lagos indeed the largest market for Honda parts in West Africa. Maneuvering through the mobs of fellow shoppers amidst the frequent calls and exchanges between traders seeking to snag customers…“Oga, wetin you wan buy?…Madam I get am for shop!”, can be taxing

The vendors here never want for business. Due to poor road conditions, drivers in Lagos are all too aware that at one time or another, they will have to replace parts for their vehicles. While some owners take their cars for expensive maintenance at the dealerships, others take a more local approach, seeking out the clusters of local mechanics — many without formal education — who have set up here and trained themselves and each other to provide top quality service.

On the surface the place is hectic, but dealers here are not as disorganized as they first seem. There is a centralized union that enforces rules and regulations to which they are all held accountable.

The Secretary, Union of Spare Part Dealers, Ebute Metta, Chief Izuu E. Cajethan Azubuike explained that although this kind of business is relatively particular to Igbo people, it is also a matter of passion — the tenacity and zeal for business. Due to his keen interest in cars and how they operate, he returned to learn the trade after graduating from the university, a decision he regards as one of the best he ever made. He is one of many who have come here as young men to grow through  an informal but highly structured training program that has bread a whole class of Lagos business men.

The culture of apprenticeship

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A Master at Work in the Motorcycle Section of Otto Spare Parts Market, Ebute Meta. Photo Credit: Uzodinma Iweala

For years, informal apprenticeship has been a medium through which youth and adults in African societies can learn a trade or craft for their future wellbeing and livelihood. According to a 2014 study on Igbo Entrepreneurial activity in the International Journal of Scientific and Technology Research, the Igbo Trade Apprenticeship System (ITAS) is a practice that results from Nigeria’s communal way of living where one person’s child is everyone’s child, and village elders traditionally assumed responsibility for the youth population.

In most cases, experienced businessmen or traders are approached by relatives who request for their children to be enrolled as apprentices. They work under close supervision and in some cases even live with their masters for up to seven years. Many of these youth are not pushed into apprenticeship by their parents. Their choices are born from necessity in a country with a large youth population and scarce jobs.

These informal apprenticeship systems can be difficult and are often plagued by a lack of standardization. While they do obtain practical work and training, many apprentices lack a theoretical base of instruction for their work and face poor evaluation techniques. They also lack modern training facilities. This can make it difficult for individuals trained through these systems to move from the informal sector into the formal sector. While there are a few joint ventures to boost and formalize apprenticeship in Nigeria, the requirements are hardly sensitive to the needs of informal apprentices, who in most cases stopped schooling at the secondary level. For instance the NNPC/MPN Apprenticeship Programme of 2015 is only open to applicants with an Ordinary National Diploma (OND) from an engineering discipline. What then happens to all the young Nigerians who may not have these qualifications but have taken an interest in operations and maintenance technician careers through apprenticeship? The answer is simple – they work diligently under a dealer for years before gaining their “independence.”

To settle or not to settle

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Accommodation and Shops in Otto Spare Parts Market, Ebute Meta Photo Credit: Uzodinma Iweala

Upon mastering the art of spare parts dealer, apprentices are “settled” or paid off with a token sum that often serves as the start-up capital for graduating apprentices. Unfortunately, a number of former apprentices that I spoke to stated that supervisors go against their word. Rather than pay their graduating apprentices,  they instead insist that the new dealers should be grateful for their training. This practice could stem from a lack of formal legal agreements which state the terms and conditions for the instruction in a trade.

In other parts of the world, an apprenticeship is bound by legal documentation and codes that stipulate time frames and conditions for employment. For businessman, Mr Godwin Ejike, this was not his experience when passing through the “University of Car Spare Parts’.

Mr Ejike, an indigene of Anambra state, is the definition of hard work. He started off as an apprentice in the late 90’s working under an uncle for almost eight years. In almost every aspect of his life he has learnt to survive under the harshest conditions. Now in his mid-forties, he is a proud father of two and has managed to work his way up the spare parts ladder. However the path to attaining this level of success didn’t come at an easy price.

At the point when his “Oga” deemed him fit for graduation, he was given only a meagre sum because, according to his uncle, that was the true value of his eight years of work. Released into the world with only a month’s feeding allowance, Mr. Ejike was forced to source for the little he could by working as a bus boy – running errands for other dealers around the Nkwo Nnewi market in Anambra state. Things changed when one day he was entrusted with overseeing a shipment of spare parts from Nnewi to Lagos.  He was heavily rewarded for carrying out his task diligently and used his earnings to start and grow his business.

Although Mr. Ejike did not have the opportunity to enroll in a higher institution he is satisfied by the current growth and expansion of his business. His monthly income surpasses the average salary of a Nigerian graduate in the corporate sector – N80, 000 -100,000. Despite his success he still believes that the Nigerian government has failed him and his fellow entrepreneurs in countless ways – in terms of providing low cost start-up capital to would-be businessmen or improving small and medium scale enterprises through provision of business expansion funds. “Rather than sit down and wait for the government after graduating, with this you have something that will bring money fast,” he told me.

Another dealer I met who wishes to remain anonymous spent three years as an apprentice with his father’s friend. He explained to me that in the apprenticeship system, one person can employ over six people yearly. This process has helped to boost employment and empower thousands of youths. Presently running his own business of selling Honda spare parts, he has settled over eighty apprentices in the last twenty years.  One of his apprentices, Ikechukwu from  Onitsha in Anambra state, told me he has been working for about a year. Although he doesn’t live with his master, his makes enough to cater for his immediate needs. I.K. as he prefers to be called, has since gained skills while boosting his confidence as a young businessman. “He can even leave me for shop, I no carry him money play,” I.K. says.  He hopes to open his own spare parts shop when he graduates.

Motivation

While there are indeed some of controversies surrounding apprenticeship with the practice sometimes compared to child labor as many apprentices begin work early in life, many people who are part of the system insist that without apprenticeship, they would not have been able to make it in the Nigeria of today. There are also the powerful examples of Innocent Chukwu and Cosmas Madueke who both went from underage apprentices to multi-billionaires.

For most however,  the motive for informal apprenticeships is finding a means to an end —  acquiring the necessary skills to live an economically and psychologically secure life.

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