Deborah Ukaumunna
Mr. Chima Nwokoro is a business development consultant and founder of 5TT Partners, in this interview, he decried the lack of awareness on an online investment and the immense potentials of online businesses among Nigerians most especially the youths.
Nwokoro is an online investment expert and coach. He is the brain behind the 5TT Profit Club, a popular online platform with over 260,000 investors under his tutelage. According to Nwokoro, his focus is to teach individuals, most especially youths, on how to earn legit wealth online instead of going into internet fraud.
Except…
You seem to be involved in a lot of things at the same time. So how would you describe what you do?
I regard myself as a business professional, entrepreneur and online investor. Because i have one thing or the other in those three areas.
I am a business development consultant for 5TT Partners, which is my company. And what I do from that point is performing business development work for foreign companies that are not in Africa, but are looking to do business within Africa. So I do scooping work for them, managing clients with Africa, West Africa in particular.
Also I am an educator. I train, educate and coach clients, SMEs, people looking to grow sales efficiency in their business and also take advantage of the online space. the concept I use typically is what I call the Enterprise Without Walls (EWW). So you’re able to do business without restrictions of boarder differences.
Then I am an investor, I facilitate online trading academy coaching, mentoring and supporting traders in the retail market. So people trying to get involved in the financial market investing their money and trading their money. I run the 5TT Profit Club that supports traders to do that. So 5TT Profit Club is about training people about money management. That money management is more than just trying to make a quick buck, but a holistic approach to taking control of your personal finances. 5TT Profit Club is about trading in stock market, forex and other types of viable and legit online investments.
You mentioned legit online earnings, but many Nigerians negatively perceive online businesses as some form of internet scamming schemes.
How do you deal with such negative notions?
You are absolutely right. When people don’t understand things, they fear it. And typically at that point there can be abuse. I see people call me Scammer online. It is not because they simply want to call me a scammer, it is because some of them may have been scammed. However, that is a small part of the whole thing. I wanted to prove that making legit money online works. So in 2019, I set up an online based trading academy, and right now I have over 260, 000 members and the results have been very rewarding.
So for me the way to conquer darkness is not to talk about it, rather is to move up and show the light. Even though there is resistant to it, but there are many of us who are genuine and who will keep doing what is right, and would eventually conquer the negative press surrounding online opportunities. the only way to improve is to just keep showing people the way.
Youths unemployment is one of Nigeria’s biggest bane. How do you think this can be solved?
The truth is that we do have a huge misplacement of priorities. There is glorification of cash; note I didn’t say wealth, cash. If you have cash people think you’re doing well. but the presence or absence of cash, doesn’t mean signify been rich or poor. And that is where the biggest problem is because there is so much opportunity in Nigeria.
Come on YouTube and see the numerous items that can be produced with empty plastic bottles. If you move from Third Mainland Bridge all the way to Berger, the amount of plastic bottles and bags littered all through that stretch is so much. someone can take his time to go pick those waste plastics and convert them to floor tiles by mixing them with sand. They don’t need expert equipment to do that. You have much information on the Internet.
But the young people are not thinking that way. they want to do something today and start packing into their accounts in two months.
They don’t have patience. So first of all the young people need to be reoriented.
Youths are often referred to as the leaders of tomorrow, as a developmental coach, what should Nigerian youths be leaning towards at this time?
In my opinion, there is a need for a complete paradigm shift for most of our young people. Now, it’s not really a fault of theirs to have found themselves in an environment where there is no national patriotism and too much focus on the acquisition of material things with little or no effort.
In many advanced and advancing countries around the world, young people are the ones leading innovation and are actually disrupting established norms of enterprise.
These young folks do not unreasonably focus on the perks of success. Rather, they are trying to create systems, products, services and solutions that solve problems bigger than themselves in their societies.
In a lot of cases, their success in delivering the bigger purpose comes with all the perks and material pleasures they would ever desire to have.
My encouragement to our young people is to innovate. Resources follow good ideas. You can see it all across the country with Jiji, Jumia, Paystack, etc. There are a lot of others with small and growing businesses, but not yet popular. We want more in all the sectors.
Information technology is seen as the new crude oil, how can Nigerian youths tap into this goldmine?
Simple… skill up! Get formal and informal education in the IT sector.
The opportunities are vast as IT and data science permeates every area of life now. In medicine, engineering, education, commerce, you name it. We now have self-driving vehicles, people speak and have conversations with their phones or some other gadgets. The way wars are fought now is through data breach, remote technology, and one can now get training from prestigious institutions globally whilst sitting in their room in Lagos, etc.
All these things are made possible through IT and technology in general. For our country to progress we must start to transform our institutions, aligning them to global best practices.
You are also into consulting,what policies do you think the government can enact to support the consultancy/marketing industry?
In my opinion, these three things are needed – people, land and resources. Nigerians are industrious generally, where the government is failing us is being able to provide the basic amenities. Because where the amenities exist, business, marketing and consultants would thrive. If we are not making things, we cannot be opening offices. You consult for offices that need to find ways to save money or more efficient ways to get things turned around. For us to help them achieve this, then some of these basic things like the right policies for business, environment, tax policies, infrastructure like power, rail and water transport that should help them move the product, should be in place.
How does your company align with demands in today’s business world?
My goal is to transfer knowledge, skills and experience from people who are doing it. For me, the drive is that Africans should not look for help anymore. We should collaborate with other people. So instead of being needy, let us collaborate. I heard this statement that touched me and made me think, and it is ‘countries that do business together would never go into war.’ They may fall into trade wars but would not fight with ammunition. They may disagree on a lot of levels, but they would never bomb themselves because there is too much at stake.