By Ebele Orakpo

Mr. Pedro Chukuka is of KADCON Consulting (KC), a management consulting firm with focus on human capital management and job creation initiatives.

Armed with a first degree in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Ibadan, a master’s in Business Administration from the University of Benin and another master’s in Chemical Engineering from the University of Southern Denmark, Chukuka worked in the banking sector,  environmental management and oil and gas services before he decided to venture into human capital management.

Said Chukuka; “The vision of the company which is to provide peculiar human capital management initiatives that shall optimally harness Nigeria’s abundant human capital, was born out of the desire to create jobs for the abundant potentials we have in Nigeria. This vision did not just come up overnight. It was a dream I have had for several years and it is just being realised now. “

Although KADCON Consulting was incorporated as a business in March 2013, “but before this, I had touched several lives at a personal level, not at business level, so we just want to take this to the next level. It is not about me as a person but about a team I have been working with. We are a group of persons with various backgrounds; we have a medical doctor who has interest in human development and has touched lives too, offering free medical services to persons that could not afford it. This gives you an idea of where we are going.”

*Mr. Pedro Chukuka…In KJN, we have direct contact with the people, discover their strengths then guide them to realise their dreams.

Opportunities:

“There are millions of opportunities all around but when people are not given the chance to be empowered to take advantage of these opportunities, they just lie there wasting away. So we want to harness these abilities from the different backgrounds that we have. I know so many talented Nigerians walking about without direction and focus. They don’t have a clear picture of what to do and how to realise their potentials in life. So we are helping them become focused. So human capital management is the idea,” he said.

The project:

“One of our projects is what we call KADCON Job Network (KJN) and our belief is that anyone who participates in that programme will see his life not remaining the same because we have a blueprint that will create jobs. We don’t want to fill job vacancies as the traditional consulting companies do; we want to create jobs. We will have profitable ventures and businesses that will utilise the strengths of members of KJN; and we want to have control over our sphere of influence.  “We will develop people, give them room to function, some will have the opportunity to travel outside the country. We have millions of graduates in Nigeria walking the streets.”

Talents abound in Nigeria:

“There is a feeling in Nigeria that we do not have talents so many employers feel more comfortable bringing someone from outside; but we have a lot of people with potentials but these potentials are not realised because of the system we run here.

” I know Nigerians have their deficiencies in the training aspect – the kind of curriculum we run – but the truth is that people that graduated in Nigeria have enough knowledge to be given a chance. If they are recruited the right way, the right persons will have the ability to prove themselves. I have been privileged to interact with persons from different parts of the world and I know it is possible to get the best out of these young Nigerians if they are given the opportunity.

So I feel what we are doing is to build a talent pool from where Nigerian companies can readily get sound graduates they can employ.

Job creation:

The idea of KC is something we are not used to around here. They might see it as a strange idea because the tradition is for people to come out of school and expect job vacancies to be  available for them to fill, but it is a changing world and we must think differently to be able to tackle the unemployment crisis. The way out is that we want KC to be a starting point for the private sector to play a deliberate role in turning around the unemployment crisis we have in Nigeria.

If developed countries are complaining of unemployment, Nigeria should not complain of unemployment because developed countries feel they have reached their peak but here, there are opportunities. “Is it the roads, agriculture, ICT, application of technology in education or healthcare? We need to create profitable ventures in these areas. We have very intelligent, smart medical doctors in Nigeria, smarter than some of those outside but the opportunities have not been created.”

Entrepreneurs/Intrapreneurs:

“You can grow businesses and the economy by having entrepreneurs. What I see all around is entrepreneurship, not everyone is endowed to be an entrepreneur. There are people that are talented to be intrapreneurs. Vanguard was started by someone. If not for his ingenuity, perhaps this might not have gone beyond the starting point. Some other persons ventured into the business and made a mess of it.

There are several persons working here, some as editors that could have started something like this and it would have failed, but the value they are adding to Vanguard is sustaining it so those are the intrapreneurs. It is an aspect of entrepreneurship.  So what we have in mind is a situation where we will render customized service. We don’t just want to do something that is for the public.

In KJN, we have direct contact with the people, discover their strengths then guide them to realise and actualise their visions, dreams and aspirations in life. The average human resource person today in Nigeria thinks of filling job vacancies whereas they should be job creators. The problem we have in Nigeria is a human problem and if you have human resource managers, shouldn’t they be the ones you should look up to, to solve the problems we have in the area of unemployment?” he asked.