By Faith Anisiobi, The Sight News
Veteran lawyer and counsel in the legal battle for the families of the six young men killed by police in the incident popularly known as the Apo Six, Amobi Nzelu, has blamed the growing pursuit of quick wealth for the decline of the traditional Igbo apprenticeship and mentorship system.
Nzelu made the remarks while interacting with journalists at his Abuja residence during a New Yam festival, where he expressed concern over the erosion of the values that once sustained the Igbo apprenticeship model.
According to him, the traditional system was founded on patience, discipline and mentorship, under which young people served established businessmen, acquired skills and experience and were eventually supported to establish their own businesses.
“The issue of master-servant relationship and mentorship, we said goodbye to it in Igbo land because of the quest to get money,” Nzelu said.
He, however, noted that the problem was not entirely on the part of young people, as some business owners also failed to properly settle apprentices after years of service.
Nzelu said he had handled cases involving disputes between masters and former apprentices over settlement, stressing that the breakdown of trust between both sides was weakening the system.
He warned that the decline of responsible mentorship was having wider social consequences, particularly by exposing young people to the temptation of fraud, exploitation and other risky ways of making money.
The lawyer recalled an incident in Anambra State involving a young man who arrived at a traditional ceremony with a large amount of cash and began distributing money.
Nzelu said he became curious about the source of the money because he knew the young man’s father was a farmer.
He said the incident reflected a worrying change in societal values, where wealth was increasingly celebrated without sufficient attention to how it was acquired.
Nzelu also recounted an incident at a hotel in Awka, where he said he intervened after hearing a young woman crying and discovered that she was being dragged towards a room.
According to him, the woman was a university student who had accepted money from men at the hotel, an experience he said highlighted the vulnerability of young people facing poverty, exploitation and the pressure to acquire wealth quickly.
He further recalled encountering young men at the hotel whom he described as internet fraudsters, saying their conversation reinforced his concern that money had become an overriding measure of success among some young Nigerians.
Nzelu argued that rebuilding the culture of mentorship could provide young people with a more sustainable path to success.
He cited his own legal practice as an example, recalling how one of his long-serving workers acquired substantial practical knowledge of legal procedures through years of working alongside lawyers.
The worker, he said, was eventually able to remind him of an important statutory requirement he had overlooked while preparing a case.
“He was not a lawyer, but years of working alongside lawyers had given him valuable knowledge,” Nzelu said.
He stressed that effective mentorship should involve the transfer of knowledge, discipline, values and opportunities from one generation to another.
“Mentorship is gone in Igbo land because of the quest for money,” he said, warning that without deliberate efforts to restore the culture, more young people could continue seeking shortcuts to wealth.
Nzelu said restoring the apprenticeship and mentorship tradition was therefore not merely about preserving Igbo culture, but also about providing young people with a credible alternative to the dangerous attraction of overnight wealth.
