Cosmas Maduka: I’m Never Afraid of Mistakes, They are Part of Growth Process 

His reputation goes before him so that what he lacks in stature is amply compensated by status and societal weight; a man who has conquered fear and turned every stumbling block on his way into stepping stones and foundation of success. Cosmas Maduka sits astride various boards of companies locally and internationally and is a true story of making it from grass to grace only buoyed by his faith in God and a grim determination to succeed. He told Obinna Chima, Ahamefula Ogbu and Bennett Oghifo how he bluffed his way through poverty and by dint of hard work and reliance on the principles of God, he has ticked all the boxes of his expected goals. Excerpts:

W

as your childhood ambition to become a billionaire businessman?

There was no ambiguity about it in my mind. My childhood dream began at an unprecedented age, after the death of my father. The first person a child recognises is the mother because it sucks her breasts. Before any other person, he knows who his mother is, and my mother told me that I will go places in life, and that I should believe in myself, and that I should believe in God.  She told me I’m a likable fellow and that people would favour me. I grew up with unprecedented courage. I grew up with unprecedented optimism. I started hawking on the streets at the age of six. My mother would fry akara early in the morning and put one-pound worth for me to sell and also for my elder brother, and we would go out to sell and before going to school, I would have done two pounds and sold all the akara my mother gave me to sell. How was I doing it? I’ll meet a person, I will start smiling first, and tell you to buy akara. And if you say you don’t want to buy, as you begin to move, I will hold your clothes and the person will say, “Ah, is it by force?” I will just look at them and I will say, “my mother told me nobody says no to me.” They will start laughing. So that optimism and confidence attracted them and some would end up giving me pence for akara, or put three pence. Those were the magic of my selling. You know, everything about life is practice, good or bad. If you do things over a period, you get used to it and you become excited about it. So, things like that  gave me confidence and I began to believe that doors do not close. I started to move with that level of confidence and optimism growing up. So, I give the credit of my entrepreneurial spirit to my mother who inspired me to greatness, and from then, my ambition for success and prayer to make a difference grew. The rest is history as we progress. 

Which childhood experience has remained indelible in your mind?

I will tell you the story. The day of my father’s funeral. I remember that it was one of the best days of my life because as a child, we had to fake illness to eat rice. Rice was the delicacy of those days, not noodles, and you have to behave like you were not feeling fine and you lost appetite and if they ask you what you’ll eat, you’ll say rice. But to me, how come this particular day was like Ofala, a big festival. People were coming, different Masquerades were coming to our house and some were shooting double barrel guns.  I took the shell and put it in my nostrils and it gave off some funny smell. People came to me, an innocent boy, feeling sympathy. I ate rice about eight times on that day. I just felt, ‘oh my God, why would this kind of day not remain forever? I witnessed a man in a black suit with a bow tie, white shirt, and that was my father lying in bed lifeless. I thought the man was taking a nap. The other thing that made sense to me vividly was, by the right hand, opposite the house, very close to the coconut tree, they made a small barricade, and my mother was there crying. I was wondering why this woman was angry? Because those masquerades and people were dancing, I said, ‘why is she angry? I didn’t know anything about death, it was later part of my life that the memory came and I understood it was the funeral of my father. So, one of the early stages of my life that was very remarkable which nothing can wipe off in my memory was the funeral of my father in which innocently, I did not know it was a funeral.

Growing up, what would you say was your saddest moment?

Well, too many things have happened in my life, but to be very honest, my mother worked very hard to support my siblings and I. Incidentally, I was the second in my family, and from Igbo tradition, or maybe, Nnewi in particular, all attention is paid to the first son. Most of the other people are treated like second cousins in the family. I happen to be a second child. So my mother’s aspiration was what she could do to help her first son become great and all of that. So even though she could see that naturally, I was gifted, she was more inclined to supporting my elder brother, to at least have a Junior School Certificate. So, at that tender age, I had to go live with her parents, that is, my grandparents, who taught me domestic work. My grandfather was a very industrious man. He had a yam farm and we used to go to the farm early in the morning, fetch water, feed the goats, and then take the lambs out to the field to graze. I learnt some business secrets, even by dealing with those domestic animals.

Some level of discipline is required in life. Nobody grows in his comfort zone. I learnt the principles of management, and how to manage things to grow. Now, the sad thing about my life is that because of my level of cleverness as a child, it happened that everything that went wrong in the family, people will say it was Cosmas that did it. Even the ones I knew nothing about. I recall that one time I had the privilege to have a chat with the late former Attorney General of Nigeria, Uncle Bola Ige, he told me that he had the same kind of experience.  So, I just decided I have to live and accept being misunderstood, provided I had not done anything to be misunderstood. Today, I teach that if you want to be successful, one of the prerequisite is the willingness to be misunderstood. If you are too careful to mind whatever everybody says about you, you will be tele-guided by people’s opinion, and you will never actualise your dream. You can never be independent to live by your conviction. So people must know who they are and where they are going. If you don’t know who you are, somebody is going to tell you who you are not. So, I grew up with that level of optimism, and it does a lot of things. God actually used some of my childhood life experience to train me for the challenges I’m going to meet in future. Many times people complain about challenges in their life, I came to conclusion that nobody grows in his comfort zone. I came to conclusion that what happened to you in life does not matter, but what you make out of it. I make statements that people wonder where is he coming from. When I say success is not a degree; when I say things like, you are responsible for who you are; you cannot blame anybody that everyone of us, no matter the condition where we are in life, we are a sum total of decisions and choices we make but the reality is that decisions you make today will determine who we are going to be in the next five years. It will determine who we are going to be in the next 10 years. As a matter of fact, some decisions we make today will determine our entire destination. So the worst thing in life is not to do anything. That’s the worst thing anybody can do to himself. The reality of life is that any child that is afraid to fall will be lame, because God has not made any other way for you to walk, but as a child, you have to rise and fall, before you learn to walk. When you see a child trying to walk, moving like the breeze is blowing him her, your father will be excited to give you his left finger for you to hang on just to be able to walk. When you do that repeatedly, your leg becomes strong. You start standing, you start walking. So that’s how life operates. So, I am never afraid to make a mistake. I realised that mistake is part of the growth process, and what I don’t want to do is to make one mistake two times. People say that someone fell. I don’t use the word fall, I say the person is going through a learning curve. That person made the mistake so that he can learn and be able to improve and actualise his or her dream.

So, I have different philosophies in life that guide me, that are my mantles, that help me to have the right mindset that really propelled me to where I am. That is, you are a sum total of who you are, and that mindset is what makes a difference in the life of people. Also, confidence is key. When you say courage is a prerequisite for success, courage is not an absence of fear, but it’s the ability to act in the face of danger. Some of these helped in building the confidence that helped me ultimately become who I am today. I was a child climbing palm tree before I turned eight years. If you see me on the palm three I used to look like a bird, people will be saying, ‘How did this boy get there? I rode a motorbike at the age of 11 and my leg wouldn’t touch the ground then.

So, I  did many things ahead of my age, and each one of them built confidence and the courage I needed to confront other challenges. So today, when I see challenges, I just see them as opportunities. Anytime I am confronted with a situation that is overwhelming, something in my subconscious just tells me to be ready for my promotion. There’s something good along the way, and once I withstand that, then you just see something happen.

Seeing the kind of experiences you had, what will you say is your happiest moment so far in life?

My happiest moment in life so far, with no ambiguity, was that I met the Lord Jesus Christ at the tender age of 14. Before I turned 15, I embraced the gospel, and by the grace of God, I’ve been consistent. I’ve never looked back. So for over five decades of my life, I’ve been in this agenda that I am. The reason is that when I came to meet the Lord Jesus Christ, my life was totally revolutionised. By the age of 14, I was thinking 40; by 15, I started thinking 50 by 16, I was already thinking like  60 years old men, and I was like a magician. People could not comprehend me. At the age of 15 after I became a Christian, I decided there are five things I wanted to accomplish before I turn 25. I didn’t have them in my head. I wrote them down because of the principles of law of God that I understood from the Word of God. You may carry a mobile phone around for 20 years, it doesn’t matter how many years is on it, if you do not understand the manufacturer’s mind, the laws he built in it, how to operate it, you can’t make the right demand from it. You can hold this phone, it will not deliver to you what the manufacturers promised, but somebody who read the manual and understood it well or use this phone to perform a function that you do not know that the phone has would be able to operate it better. So, I studied the laws of God and I understood how life operates. Jesus spoke in Matthew Chapter 16, verse 19, I will give you the keys, plural, not single key, of the kingdom of God. I tell people, when you get to a door and start speaking in tongues, it means you didn’t have the right key, because door does not submit to speaking in tongues. If you put the right key, that door will submit or obey. So if you understand the principles of God, life become easy and you operate in a position of authority.

So, the best moment of my life and the greatest thing that ever happened to me was to meet the Lord at a tender age when my mind was open, clean, looking for ideas, and my leaders pumped in the Word of God in me. At the age of 15, after working for my uncle for five and half years, sleeping at Keffi Street, Oyingbo bus stop, Lagos, in 1976, he gave me N200 and for my brother, with just N200, the worst thing in life had happened to me. So, in life, it is  not what  happened to you that matters. It’s your attitude and the way you react. I turned to my uncle, I said, I worked for you for almost six years, how would you give me just N200 as my stewardship? I served you to the best of my abilities. I managed your branch in Jos, you moved me to Sokoto, Lagos, and Nnewi. What do you want me to do now? He said, whatever you like to do. If I had stolen my uncles money, I would not have been able to confront him like that.

There were things you don’t expect a 15-year boy to say. And my uncle responded saying he knew I would succeed. I was excited because I needed that blessing from him. My excitement was not about the N200 because if I didn’t have the right mindset, I would have used that N200 to eat goat head that evening and started blaming everybody around me, including God. So, thereafter, I established a company called Maduka Brothers. I wrote down that by 18 years, I wanted to live in three bedroom apartment of my own; by 20 years, I wanted to take a lady to the altar; by 23 years I wanted to own a car, and by 25 years I wanted to be a millionaire. I wrote all these down and hung it on the wall. Before I go to bed, I will always I look at the things I wrote and remind myself about my purpose in life. With that, when I am sleeping, I will be dreaming that I am in Japan; I see myself clearing containers; discussing with experts in trade and things like that. In the morning, when I get up, I will pray. I avoided anything or anybody that didn’t align with my goals in life. If  I am chatting or discussing with you, if  you don’t fit into any of those five goals I had written down to achieve, then you are  a distraction. I will cut you off. With that, people started saying I was arrogant. No, I wasn’t arrogant, I was pregnant with my vision. A pregnant woman doesn’t play karate.

Your vision is your goal, it is your GPS, your direction. You don’t get to a bookshop and start thinking which book to buy. So, true to my vision in life, by 18 years, I was living in a three-bedroom apartment of my own and my senior brother was still living with my mother in a one-bedroom apartment in my father’s house. I wasn’t competing with him, but I knew where I was going. So when you get your vision, you get your acts together. Again, true to my goals, at 19 years and nine months, I wedded my wife Charity and took her to the altar. I got married before I turned 20. I wanted to have my first son at 21 years, but God thought otherwise. The baby didn’t come immediately, so I pursued my other dream. At 22 years, I passed through old Awka road in Onitsha, I saw a Passat car, blue colour wagon, 3000 kilometers. I negotiated it and closed the transaction. So, at the age of 22, I owned a car. The next thing, on that list, which I missed the target by one year was to be a millionaire.  Right from childhood, I have always been conscious of time, because your time is your life. People ask me, ‘why are you behaving like a mad man? Every day you have speaking engagement, you are going everywhere. What are you doing? I tell them, I’m conscious of time. I will be 66 years on December 24 and 14 years from now I will be 80 years. I’m running out of time, so what I’m doing is to use the rest of my life to fertilise the young generation; use the rest of my possibly 14 active years to empty out completely, so that when I get to the cemetery, the cemetery will be disappointed with my carcass because no gift of God in me that will go back in there. I tell people that the cemetery is the best goldmine if it is to be mined because there you have dreams that were never actualised. You see business plans that were never put in place; you see poems that were never written; you see movies that were never actualised, because those people kept on procrastinating and when they died, they carried their gifts to the grave. So, I want to die empty, such that nothing God gave me to humanity, is taken back to the grave. That is why I’m giving out everything, fertilising young people, helping people to change their mindset. The industry that I came from, I have revolutionised it. People today are beginning to structure their business.  So, nobody is remembered for what they did not do. You are only remembered for what you did. Nobody is remembered for the problem they caused, they are remembered for the problems they solved for humanity. We came to this world, every one of us loaded with gifts to impact humanity. So life is not about duration, but about donation. What did you give back to life? You can live an effective 33 years, the world will never forget you, you can live and become Metusellah, it will only be in record of 967 years and then he died. No other thing was said about him. But we can’t stop talking about Peter, we can’t stop talking about John. We can’t stop talking about James, because they lived effective lives. They touched humanity. I made my first $2 million at the age of 24 and the rest is history. I built this building (at Adeola Odeku, Lagos), where you are at 37 years, not 45. I built the house where I still live in today, in the village at the age of 25 years. I had junior, my first son at 26 years and i built that house before i had my first son. I built the house I live in at Ikoyi at 40 years. It’s not an exaggerated story. So, that is the power of vision. Vision is not a function of sight, it’s a function of the spirit, your mind and where you plan to go. And this is what I try to explain to young people the power of positive confession that is matched with action. When you get up and say, ‘this country is useless, there’s nothing that can ever come out of it,’ that is your word. Nothing is useless that will bless you. I admit, that we may not be living in the best place in the world, but I’m very optimistic that tomorrow will be better than today for Nigeria. I went to America when I was about 22 years in 1980. That was my first trip to America. I arrived and finished what I went for and everybody I met convinced me to stay back. I told them was going back to Nigeria. A lady asked me at the airport,‘what is your frustration, why go back to Nigeria?’ By that time, people said this country was useless and that nothing was working here. But I had common sense and knew that to be a true Nigerian, I have to be identified with her shame and glory, whatever she is, is what I am. Then, in 1980, I decided against all advice and returned back to Nigeria. All those who advised me to stay said, ‘you know you didn’t go to school, you can get a scholarship.’ Of course, I had already integrated into the US system. Then, you could get a Social Security that either states valid for work or not valid. So I had the American social security that didn’t say not valid for work. And I got a driver’s license, so I was already integrated into the system. However, I returned to Nigeria. Even though I was not a millionaire, I believed in this country. So your belief is important in whatever you want to do because there are opportunities to grow here. Everybody that advised me not to come back to Nigeria, the only thing they have better than me today is the bottle of milk and orange juice in their refrigerator and a 24-hour power supply, which I can also afford if I want it. I don’t need national grid. So that’s my life in a very precise manner. Where God took me and where I am.

 So as a successful serial entrepreneur, what counsel will you give to the Nigerian youth today?

The first thing I will tell any Nigerian youth is to believe in him or herself, because every one of us is the first believer of ourselves. Nobody will believe you until you believe in yourself. And your belief in yourself has to be tested. Joseph saw himself as a Prime Minister in Egypt. He would not have had any trouble if he never told anybody. When I didn’t have N10,000 I told people I would be a millionaire. Go to Nnewi today, my nickname is ‘Cosmas Nwa Jesus Nnewi millionaire,’ and they used to use it to mock me. How did God create this world? The Bible said he speaks things that are not as though they were. that is power of positive thoughts and your words are powerful. And that is why I tell everyone of us, don’t be in a hurry to make a statement. You are justified by the words of your mouth and you are taken to captivity by the words of your mouth. In this room now, people are talking, voices are moving, you don’t see them. I do not see them. If I am thinking right, my positive thought will be in sync with some of the things and they will be downloading inside of me, if you are thinking negatively, all the negative waves will be downloading into you, and you get hooked up to negativity. Every one of us is a spiritual being trying to have a natural experience, because we came from God, and we are going to go back to God. So believing in yourself is the first advice. But believing in yourself is not believing in yourself for you to just cross your legs and do nothing. Believing in yourself is believing in your vision, that you have always won, that you are one in a million out of five billion cells that left your father’s body and clamoured for one egg. So, if you have made it among five billion, why would you not make it among 200 million people? It’s a much easier race to run. You are going to be different no matter what the situation is. So that self-belief is infectious. It will infect people around you. All of us must not be business people. You can do many things and make your mark in the Guinness Book of Records. People like me don’t believe that success is money. Many billionaires are not successful. That’s where many people also get it wrong. Their description of success is the money in their bank account. No, that’s not it. Otherwise, who is more successful than Abacha of Nigeria? how many billions did we discover after his death? That money is not success, power is not success, neither is education success, because I’ve met many great intellectuals that can speak all kinds of grammar, but they can never organise their thought into productivity. So what is the benefit of that success? Success is a journey you never get to any place in life and say you have arrived. You just know that you keep going, pursuing a worldwide goal of your life. So the journey is continuity in the affairs of life.

What will you regard as the most important financial lessons that you have learnt in life?

The most important financial lessons I have learnt in life is that resources are not in abundance. Supply is depletable and can easily be used up. It gets characterised by three things, and that’s why my teacher, my greatest teacher, that I learned under his feet, the best university I’ve ever gone, was the Lord Jesus Christ, who took two fishes and five loaves of bread, prayed over it, an atomic energy got into it, and he fed 5,000 men without women and children being counted. And when he finished, he told his disciples to pick the crumbs on the ground. A man that used two fishes and five loaves, what is he doing with the crumbs on the ground? I learnt financial management from him. That for me is financial management. Let nothing be wasted. God created a man to be a manager of resources, and to deploy resources productively. Nothing developed on earth until God created man. Jesus made a lot of parables in the New Testament. Out of 38 parables he made, 26 were about financial management. For instance, the Kingdom of God is like a man going on a journey and gave five talents; the kingdom of God is like a man who saw a land – all were about money, teaching people what the kingdom of God looks like, how you deploy and manage resources effectively. So that’s my best lesson. So, I am a manager of resources. That’s what differentiates me from people. 

So tell us about 2024, all the car brands that you have under your automobile company?

Currently, we have about eight brands under our automobile company called Coscharis Motors. We started with BMW several years ago. Doctor Ime Umana and William Odumodu were firstly behind BMW in Nigeria, and we formed a company called Ultimate Motors, where the former Bashiru Tofa who ran for president under NRC, was the major shareholder. I invested N1 million in Ultimate Motors, when you needed N1 million to start a Merchant Bank in Nigeria. I lost that money for the same reason of mismanagement. And I’m sorry to say, the worst thing that can happen to you as an entrepreneur is to equate business with politics, they are not the same. Several years after BMW walked away, they made five attempts in Nigeria without success. They wanted to come back, I wrote them to give me the dealership. They refused and said they wanted a group of people to come together. I told them to allow me to run it for five years and If they are satisfied, then they give me a contract. I told them I had passion for the brand, because even before then I was driving five BMWs. As a young man, I liked speed. I was dynamic by nature. I bought the Mercedes 380 when it came out. So, getting BMW dealership was like a dream come true. BMW signed me and asked me to produce a business plan. I convinced them and they signed. It has been 25 of partnership because they signed us in 1988. I told them to judge me for the first five years. Mercedes has been here for over five decades. From then, I took BMW. In the first year I sold 150; the second year I sold 250 the third year I sold 350 but I told them, I will change the game. The fourth year of my BMW dealership was when Nigeria was to host the all Africa Games in 2003. On my way, coming back to Lagos, I thought these people are going to use vehicles. We went to meet Amos Adamu and I told him, I’ll provide the cars to do the game and that they shouldn’t pay anything. Before then, Peugeot had sent in a proposal of N4.5 billion; Honda bided N3.8 billion and here I was telling them I would offer them the cars for the games free of charge.

You know there are offers you cannot refuse. In one year, 2003, I provided 1000 BMW vehicles to the Nigerian government to execute the All Africa Game. I gave 1000 people test drive at the same time. From that year we overtook Mercedes 2003, 2004, 2005. For five consecutive years, we were leading in every segment. BMW issued me a five years contract. They had never done that to anybody before. Their contract is always one year.

Thereafter, they gave me dealership of Jamba Land Rover. We did it so well. They were happy when BMW sold Jamba landrover to Ford. Ford gave us a deal. That was how Ford came into the family. We did it so well and they were happy. We got Renault under our dealership, and recently, we acquired MG brand, a Chinese brand. So we have about eight brands under our dealership today, and  three of them, are being assembled here in Nigeria. We assemble Geely, Ford and Renault. These three brands we assemble them here in Nigeria, in our factory under Coscharis Motors assembly plant.  The automobile industry was badly hit in 2016 when Buhari came in, we had projected to sell over 10,000 cars by 2020 it has not grown.  If you need a Rolls Royce fountain today you have to pay N1.5 billion. So our brands are competing with property. Today, Customs duty alone on rolls Royce is N400 million. So, if you drive one Rolls Royce out of our showroom and bring it back that day and say you don’t like the color, you have to lose 25 percent of the value. So rather than selling 50 rolls Royce on a day, you may be selling a maximum of two or five in a year. Same thing has become of Range Rover. Range Rover is N450 million. I sold two seven series recently. How many people can afford that? It’s for the super-rich. That’s why we went for the Chinese brand because that’s where you get the critical mass today, the cheapest Chinese brand of car today is over N30 million. That is why our core business is not automobile, but automotive component. We are the pharmaceutical company of the automobile industry. If you drive any brand of car in Nigeria, you are our customer. And I’m not saying just in Nigeria, but in the entire West African market. We have 350 markets under our control.  Coscharis Ghana is here taking care of Ghana, Burkina Faso and Togo. Nigeria takes care of Togo. We are in Gabon. We are in Ivory coast, and recently we expanded to Sierra Leone, that is we cover the entire West Africa. You can’t drive your car one year without me eating your money. So it doesn’t matter which brand you are driving, you are our customer. So even when our automobile business is going down, our auto component business is going up. That is because if you can’t buy a new car, you have to repair the old one you have, which is our core business. I don’t work here (Victoria Island), I come here to take meetings. My office is at ASPAMDA, where I deal daily with traders and those that deal in spare parts.