Legend of the day
(Sharing the inspiring lives of the extremely famous, influential, talented and admired)
Cosmas Maduka
There is a saying which says when God has made up His mind to make a man great, absolutely nothing can stop it; not any man and not even what appears to be adverse circumstances. That is the story of this enigma, Mr Cosmas Maduka CON. He once told the story of how he would always tell his mum of how successful he would one day become. One day, tired of hearing her son repeat the same thing, day in day out, while they daily struggled to keep head above water, his mum in total exasperation asked him to please stop and just keep quiet. Cosmas felt offended. “Why should she dampen his spirit and kill his dream?” He wondered. He warned his mother that he would ask her out of his vehicle if she did that again. The mother didn’t listen. Pronto! He opened the door on her side of the vehicle and asked her to step out. She thought it was a joke but she soon found it was anything but. This is the spirit of the man. Anything is possible and no one, not even his mother, will tell him otherwise.
Born on December 24, 1958, Cosmas Maduka’s childhood and young adult life was one of barely imaginable deprivation. He lost his father at just four years old. At the age of just seven years, he had to withdraw from Primary school as fees could no longer be paid. As a naturally hard working individual, even at that tender age, he began to hawk his mother’s akara (bean cake), which was their only source of income. He resisted the temptation to roam the streets of Jos, Plateau State, where he was born and where they lived. One day, at the age of twelve, an uncle who had been admiring his sense of responsibility from afar, decided to ease Cosmas mother’s burden by taking him to Lagos, where he would serve as an apprentice in his automobile spare parts shop. This marked the beginning of Cosmas Maduka’s history and unprecedented success in the automobile business. It was all rosy though. Upon discovering that Cosmas abandoned his work place to attend a church program, his uncle unceremoniously terminated his employment and gave him the measly sum of N200 as settlement. The young man who had looked forward to the day when his uncle would set up shop for him, as expected, after successfully completing his apprenticeship didn’t know what to do. It felt like his world had come to an end. Not too long after, luck would smile on him when he got an opportunity to move vehicle spare parts from Lagos to the east to sell. He soon discovered this business, which he did with a friend and partner, to be a very lucrative one; but unfortunately, the partnership suffered the same fate as when he went into business with his brother. They had to part ways. It wasn’t long before he was able to establish a shop of his own and he hasn’t looked back since then. In 1982 he established Coscharis Motors. The name being an amalgamation of his name and that of his wife, Charity.
Coscharis Motors has since become the sole distributor for BMW, the German car manufacturer of world renowned state of the art vehicles and owners of Rover; makers of the former British super luxury SUV, Range Rover; Ford and the revived British luxury saloon car, Jaguar. Not satisfied with capturing the Nigerian market alon and like a moving train that can’t be stopped, Coscharis proceeded to cross several borders to dominate the automobile market in Gabon, Côte D’voire and Ghana too. Burgeoned by the stellar success of Cosmas Motors, Cosmas extended his business interests still further. His Coscharis Group, a wholly indigenous conglomerate of which he is the President and Chairman now has involvement in manufacturing, ICT, Petrochemical, Auto care and Auto Components, Automobile Sales and Services, Agric and Agro Allied services.
This native of Nnewi, Anambra state who doesn’t hide from anybody his lack of formal education continues to defy all the rule books of just how high a man with such a “handicap” can go. From the look of it, for the Lagos legend and renowned philanthropist, the sky is just the beginning.
