Ever noticed how most Igbo men are big time entrepreneurs and how it’s close to impossible to see an Igbo man beg on the streets. Those who served and taught in schools in the east would testify that mostly girls go to secondary schools while the boys prefer to work. In the Igbo household, they wire the boys at a young age to believe that owning their business is the way out. 

They tell them that there’s no hope or money for them in the east and the only way they can make it big is if they move to the big city. Nollywood also perpetuates this stereotype by always portraying a broke guy who struggles in the village for years but the moment he moves to the city he makes it big in little or no time. From a very young age Igbo men have been taught that the way forward for them is to move to a big city and start their business, they’ve been taught that staying in the east limits their chances of making it big and when they leave the east the sky is their starting point. If we’re being real, the most successful business men in Nigeria are mostly people from the east, agreed that the alleged richest man in Nigeria is a Hausa man but if we were to do a census of the people entrepreneurs who owned business in Nigeria we’d find out that Igbo people own that space.

Let’s take a trip to the U.S of A. Black Americans were former slaves and they’ve been oppressed and bullied. Most Black Americans imbibe in their kids that most white people are against them. They teach their kids that the American system is against black people and this system doesn’t want them to succeed and even if they succeed this same system would find ways to pull them down. In return, these same kids believe that their country has nothing good to offer them so what do they do, they turn to crime and some of them become deadbeats. In Nigeria we are told that the heaven on earth is America, we’re told that once you get to America you’d make it no matter what. Of course that’s a big fat lie but 70% of Nigerians who go abroad tend to make it and are doing just fine compared to the Black Americans who own the land. Why, because positive reinforcements have been imbibed in us from the onset and thus we let our believes work in our favour even though we face the same racism and whatnot the black Americans face.

You’re asking, so what then do the Igbo’s and the Black Americans have in common?. Both were taught that their lands have nothing for them but sadly while one wasn’t given a tangible solution or a way out, the other was, and in result one excels and the other wallows in self-pity.