Self-Made: With $10 to His Name, This Black Man Built West Africa’s Largest Car Manufacturing Plant

Innocent Chukwuma has built a fortune by building West Africa’s biggest car manufacturing plant in Nigeria. 

With only $10 to his name, Chukwuma began to sell spare motorcycle parts, which enabled him to eventually sell motorcycles.  

During an interview with African Resource, Chukwuma said, “Then motorcycle was seen, as luxury because of the exorbitant prices. I was not happy with that because I know that I am not in business to satisfy myself. I want to render service and from the proceeds of my service make a living. So I began to think of a way to make the price of the motorcycle to become affordable for the teeming masses that needed them. It was in the process that I discovered that importers were the major reason why the price of motorcycles was very high.” 

Seeing the success in the motorcycle business, Chukwuma decided to go into the business of manufacturing motorcycles. With this, Chukwuma created a plastic company to make the plastic motorcycle parts. He also sold plastic chairs and tables. 

“The idea was to keep the plant producing at full capacity and today it has paid off because it has helped us to employ a lot of staff and millions of Nigerians are using our products which they are buying at giveaway prices. Even people from neighboring countries come to buy our plastic products,” he said to African Resource. 

He added, “Our vehicles are built with the state of the roads in the country in mind. We know that our roads are not good so we decided to make our vehicles rugged enough to withstand the shocks on the road. So our vehicles are more rugged than the imported ones because we are the ones that are wearing the shoes so we know where it is pinching us. Unlike vehicles that were manufactured for London or New York roads where roads are smooth.”