In success,destiny plays a role - Uba Ukoha

WHEN his other classmates were still trying to find their footings educationally, Chief Uba Ukoha was already riding a car at the age of about 20 years. The retired banker who is now the President of Conflict Resolution and Anti-Corruption Sensitization Initiative (CRACSI) spoke in Abuja.

Uba Ukoha Success Sir, kindly give us a back ground of yourself
My name is Chief Uba Ukoha and I was a banker but now a financial consultant and a mediator. I try to propagate the use of mediation, negotiation and dialogue in resolving issues and we are making headway. You and I know that there are cases that have been hanging in the courts since the 80s and 90s that have not been resolved and I know too well that since the end of second World War, only about three percent of the conflicts in the world have been settled in the battle field. If I want to come down home, you have seen what has been happening in the Niger Delta. We have fought and fought but President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has now decided to use mediation and you have seen the product of using mediation and not going to fight and so that is an area we are preaching about. Also, we know too well, that anywhere that there is conflict, there must be corruption and as an anti-corruption crusader, we are fighting the twin scourge of both conflict and corruption.

But you have not really told Nigerians who really you are by delving into your real beginning?
Uba Ukoha is from Ohafia in Abia State and by the grace of God, Abia State is the only state in Nigeria that is mentioned in the Bible and I am a Christian. I went to the Sacred Heart College in Aba and after my Secondary School, I went straight to work in a bank when you must have at least six credits to be employed. My mates all went into the university but we had something like an agreement among all of us that by 1979 we would see where each and every one of us would be. The Kaluchis, the Drummer boys, the Ngokawas among others all went to the University of Nigeria, Nzukka (UNN). I passed the exams into UNN but somehow, I didn’t go and so I now started working in the bank and by 1979, I had gotten my Diploma in Banking from the Institute of Bankers in London and I was made an officer in the United Bank of Africa (UBA). Those mates of mine who went into the university were doing their NYSC when I was riding my first car, a Peugeot 504. So, I would say that all my life, I have been working and reading.

So, you and your friends competed for success?
Yes. We did.

How?
You see, each time I was with my friends, we would say to each other jokingly in the next three years,you are likely to be serving me. So, when each and everyone of us gets back home, the joke would reverberate and spured me to work harder and that was the bedrock. I told one of my friends who went to UNN to read physics that by the time he graduated, I would be riding my first car, and which I did. When he came out, I still told him that I wanted to help him to move up in life just like myself and so I paid for his Post- Graduate Diploma in the University of Lagos to study Metallurgy.

Then, what, to you, is success?
Success cannot have a straight forward answer. People categorize success depending on such a person’s discipline. To me, to be successful means to be able to identify either what God has positioned you to do and you have done it to satisfaction and that is success. Because even the carpenter would come up to you to say that he is a successful person and even as it is now, we are even having successful beggars. So, success is a state of mind. So, it depends on your discipline as it cannot be general as you cannot be a successful journalist in your field and still come to be a successful banker. So, success depends on discipline. There are successful men of God, there are successful lawyers and engineers but it doesn’t mean that they are the most intelligent in the field. The late Chief Gani Fawehinmi was a successful lawyer but he made a Third Class in the University and yet there are some who made First Class in Law and they are not successful. So, I say it is a state of mind.

So, what, to you, is failure?
Failure is losing hope in whatever endeavor you are engaging in. If you feel that you a failure, it is not as if you cannot do it, but by the time you lose hope, you have failed. Failure does not mean that you cannot do it but that you lost hope. It is that you lost hope when you were supposed to keep your hope on and this is my sincere definition of failure.

Then, when would you sincerely say that you became a success?
As far as I am concerned, that is right from my childhood. I have always felt that I am a success in life. When I was a child, we had a problem in the village, we went to play football and there was thunderstorm that set fire in the elementary school. We were called into the village square and myself alone was able to wriggle the entire team out of the trouble. During the civil war, I raised a team, the best Boys Company in the whole of Ohiafia and those people I raised then into the Boys Company are my best lieutenants today. When I came to Lagos to start work, my community made me the financial secretary. So, I have always been entrusted with money. I came to Abuja here and after only one year, Ohiafia people made me the president of Ohiafia Improvement Union and I handled the affairs of the organization meritoriously. Nobody has ever come to me to say that I stole his money or duped him or that I did this or that.

So, since you see yourself as a success do you also hold the belief that success is a product of luck, providence, hardwork and of destiny?
You have already said that ; all but on top of that, there is destiny because having money or making a success does not depend on when you wake up and it does not depend on carrying heavy load. So, destiny has a role to play in a successful life because you may do what another person is doing but because you are not destined to be successful through that process, you will fail. So, with what you have said, luck, destiny, providence and all that have a role to play in life.

What do you do presently?
I am a Financial Consultant and I run a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) which is into conflict resolution and anti-corruption initiative because we have seen that no country now and tomorrow will ever do well if it doesn’t tackle corruption and we have seen that in the 7-Point agenda of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, that the issue is that he is trying to tackle corruption. Corruption, now, is a way of life. So, what do we do? We have to do away and we now have to try to preach and tell people about how to produce a president who will win $5 million from the United Nations (UN) just like the president of Botswana . It has been established that the Bostwana president has been honest and transparent. So, why don’t we have such a president and why is that none of our people or our governors has ever said that he would never tolerate corruption. People find it difficult to mention corruption in whatever address they make and so, that is why I am into this anti-corruption crusade and we are trying to propagate the issue of using mediation.

What i s your advice for the upcoming generation who want to be as successful as you are since it was stated that you became a millionaire at the relatively young age of 23 years?
Let me put the records straight. Maybe, at the age of 23, I was not a very stable millionaire but I was extremely comfortable. But for the younger generation, to be successful, and that is why I floated the NGO, will need to push people away from corruption. The entire system is so corrupt. You have seen the last SSSCE and you will see that 90 percent of the candidates failed in a state like Sokoto and only five percent had five credits. It was not like this in our time.

Parents were not buying papers for us and even if you went about buying papers, you don’t allow your parents to know. But what do we have now? Parents go out to buy papers for their children for SSSCE, JAMB and what have you. So, my advice for the younger generation is that they have to look up and struggle. Some university students would not want to read but would force the lecturers to pass them.

So, my advice to the upcoming generation is to look up and know that it is not coming to Lagos or Abuja that would guarantee them success. Discover yourself as there are many things to do and they should be creative because if you want to be competitive, you have to struggle hard and even if you want to remain in the competitive market, you have to be creative. So, I am only asking the younger generation to be creative because creativity works it.