By Cosmas Chidozie Nwankwo
Pulling people out of poverty. Cooperative societies can help unlock new capabilities through cooperative education, entrepreneurshipeducation and engagements.Cooperative education,entrepreneurial education programmes and sharing of experience can be designed as part of regular cooperative meetings such that young and inexperienced cooperative members can learn from more experienced members. So, what do we learn during our monthly meetings or are we too old to learn? We can learn from more successful persons, and we can adopt some people as coaches or mentors. How can we grow or learn when the cooperative size is limited to people of a certain class? Is this really a cooperative or a club?
The main difference between a cooperative and a club is that cooperatives are designed to help members with thrift and loans according to individual capability while a social club is mainly for welfare of members. Without the ability to engage with entrepreneurial education an important function of the cooperative is lost. Apprenticeship is well developed in Igboland. It is a relationship between the master and the apprentist who will be settled after a contractual apprenticeship period within which the apprenticeship would have helped in building the masters wealth. One of the things that the good apprentist gains is the knowledge from his master’s mates who see him as a diligent and trustworthy fellow. They provide him with coaching advise on cost effectiveness and alternative ways of doing things. So why are we not able to expand our cooperatives to create such opportunities for entrepreneurial development?
If knowledge is being sought for improving economic empowerments through cooperative societies,then we must consider the feasibility and viability of all conceivable options. It is only when our desire fuses with the feasibility and viability attributes that an innovation is created. The innovation sought could as well be an improved way of executing an old activity or process. Ideas are created when concepts are conceived and articulated to address a desire. The philosophical questions on these ideas would include whether we know what we seek, whether it is possible and whether it can be proven. We could also ask questions like whether we know what we are getting into? Getting this framing stage right is necessary and could involve a lot of iteration and idea refinements. These set of initial work is called frontend loading in business enterprise and is critical because experience have shown that getting it right at framing stage would make it easy to fully achieve project objectives once the project has progressed to detailed design stage. Attempting to force-fit a product outcome into a wrongly framed project usually results in exponential cost and time overruns. Framing therefore should be wide and divergent to accommodate all foreseeable solutions. So, do we know the objective of starting this cooperative society? It can operate as a social club, but nothing prevents it from being developed into a capability for the emancipation of the poor masses in Nanka.
So why can we not be flexible and admit people who can contribute only twenty thousand naira a month why some continue with whatever they are able to save. Cooperatives operate according to capabilities but because of the fund pulling leverages can be employed to the benefit of members. If the reason for forming this cooperative is for fund pooling so that we can have access to such cash, then why must we tie access to the required cash to schedules? What happens when we have an emergency, and it is not yet our scheduled time to receive the pooled fund. I recommend that people should have the ability to withdraw from the savings anytime they want but up to a maximum of two times a year.
There are concerns that our fixed monthly contributions could limit the number of people that are able to participate therefore limiting the ability to grow the cooperative. It is therefore recommended that the lid on fixed monthly contributions is lifted. This will serve two purposes : 1.) Some people can contribute beyond the current amount such that they can withdraw a larger amount when they need money; 2.) the cooperative can grow with the admission of more members who can maintain a regular monthly contribution according to their capability. The arrangement of direct contribution for a group of members also carries a lot of risk that needs to be addressed. Every monthly contribution to the cooperative society should be made to the cooperative account and anyone can withdraw from their savings as necessary but not more than twice a year. Since regular contributions is mandatory and since situations change most cooperatives are designed such that people can vary their contributions at most twice a year in line with their prevailing circumstances. Similarly, people should have opportunities to vary their savings twice a year according to their circumstances in the Favour cooperative society Ltd.
There should be protection barriers which should be enshrined in the cooperative byelaws, and these could include limiting peoples borrowing capability to the limit of their total savings or in real emergency asking for sureties or provide assets for loans beyond the saving accumulated by the borrower.
Currently we force ourselves to “contribute” the same amount every month and there is really no need for this. People should be allowed to contribute what they can subject to a minimum of say twenty thousand naira per month. This would enable us to admit more people and grow the cooperative as well as contribute to human capital development in Nanka.
In summary, having operated the Favour Cooperative society for two years one would ask why we cannot extend this to some of our brothers who are of good character but not empowered enough to make a monthly savings of one hundred thousand naira per month. I believe it is feasible and through so doing we can even extend this cooperative movement by helping the artisans in Nanka set up their own cooperative societies.
Concluded
Dr. Nwankwo was the President of The Shell East Staff Investment Multipurpose Cooperative Society Ltd 2002 – 2005. Email: [email protected]