A successful businessman and owner of Peace Mass Transit Limited, Dr Samuel Maduka Onyishi has said that investment in education is better than investment in business.
Onyishi, who has been in business for decades, suddenly realised this when he founded a university. Dr Onyishi posited that it was better to invest in educating people than setting up businesses for them.
Speaking from experience, Onyishi said that those he supported in their academic training were more successful than those he assisted in setting up businesses.
He spoke, weekend, during the foundation laying of Samuel Maduka University, Agu-Ekwegbe in Igbo-Etiti Local Government Area of Enugu state.
Onyishi said that he had given people money to set up businesses but only few of them succeed.
“If you pay N50, 000 for a student at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, he will not forget and 99 per cent of them will graduate.
But if you give N1 million for someone to go and start business, if he starts the business and fails, tomorrow he will say that the money you gave him has taken away his destiny,” Onyishi said.
The transport mogul revealed that he did not conceive the University as another business venture, but as a social service to improve the lives of people of all races.
Onyishi, who promised to build a world-class university that Nigeria will be proud of, narrated that he made his money from being a bus conductor to selling of second-hand clothes with a capital base of N1,200.
Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State expressed delight at the driving spirit of Dr Onyishi in envisioning a University that is entrepreneurial in content, describing it as another milestone achievement.