Today’s piece is addressed to you, Mr. and Mrs. Middle-Class Nigerian. Please do not misunderstand this letter as a beggar’s call to altruism. I know you daily, naturally and indeed irritatingly, get loads of the God-will-help-you-if-you-help-me “mendicantese”. Rather, this is a call to you for a good investment opportunity that will open a new sustainable stream of income for you while you are “helping” to alleviate the ballooning problem of unemployment which is ravaging the ranks of our youths.

Far more importantly, your pecuniary investment will not only give you a viable line of business, it will go a long way to help get many of our youths out of the state of anomie that many of them are presently in.

Now let me explain in graphical terms why this call to lucre is very urgent. Many of our governments at all levels, either independently or through some sort of partnership with private sector entities, are now investing in one form of human capital development or the other. For example, the Lagos State Government, through the Lagos State Technical and Vocational Education Board, in the last two and a half years, has engaged Automedics to train interested, young and unemployable graduates to acquire modern automotive maintenance/repair skills. In addition to upgrading the skills of willing roadside mechanics (many of whom are logically being chased out of their environmentally degrading workshops/villages) to be able to work on the computing technology in today’s vehicles.

States as far as Adamawa, Imo and Osun are actively running one skills acquisition/empowerment scheme or the other. And many of our youths and artisans are enthusiastically engaging in these programmes. But the missing link, as I see it, is the poor investment culture of our middle-class.

For example, we (Messrs. Automedics Limited) have trained hundreds of young persons and formerly out-dated mechanics to levels of competencies that have opened new vistas for them in the areas of self-employment and general employability. It is a fact though that not all of the beneficiaries of our training can (either through self-effort, filial help and governments-championed poverty alleviation programmes) appropriate the inherent opportunities of the two above mentioned windows of productive/economic opportunities.

And albeit, it may be fashionable (indeed many a time justifiable) to play the arm-chair critic and lambast our governments for their many failures. The truth is that in many societies where things work well there is a third leg to the tripod of wealth creation besides the governments and the consumers: which, dear readers, are you.

Maybe it’s about time I cursorily got into the specifics of what I’m canvassing you to do here: there are very knowledgeable young graduates and artisans who, if you decide to invest on, will be good “cash-cows” for you. Imagine starting a small high-street auto maintenance/repair shop (eg., a lube service centre with wheel balancing and alignment, and basic suspension and brake repair offerings to the motoring public) with, say, a 3-man team of diagnostician, mechanic and electrician with less than ten million naira and you’re monthly netting five hundred thousand naira and more from the investment.

We at the Automedics have actually gotten the concessioning of a chain of high-street locations inside the lube bay of a major oil marketing plc nationwide where this enterprise value chain of investor-cum-skilled partners-and-quality service to the motoring public can be perfected. We’ll (after matching you with these minor partners, whose, let’s say, ten to twenty percent equity in the venture will be factored on their marketable skills set) continue to technically mentor/develop them because of the Automedics brand that will help give the business respectability. And also your unemployed/underemployed spouse/partner or relations can also be gainfully engaged in the enterprise as your day-to-day onshore accounting officer. If you wish to know more about this socio-economic re-engineering concept, please send a mail to the above advertised e-mail address.

NB: The live and interactive public service Automedics radio production will commence broadcast during the evening drive-time on LOVE 104.5FM Abuja on Monday, August, 19 (today). It is initially scheduled to run on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays evenings for one hour. This motoring-public edifying service is a collaborative pro bono work between the management of the station and Automedics Limited. If you have any problem with your vehicle or you see any warning light on your automobile’s dashboard and you want to get free advice on how to resolve it in the manufacturer’s recommended way, then call in live into the programme if you’re either in Abuja, Nassarawa, Kogi or Niger state where the live interactive programme (to be anchored by one of the young graduates I trained) will be heard.