Thursday, May 6, 2010

The Old Boys Network: Does It Exist In Nigeria?

This is something that happens everywhere in the world.
In NY, the Columbia, Yale or Harvard IB scions dominate the world of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan. Likewise for the Ivy League lawyers, they are usually set for a career at some of the most prestigious law firms in the US, mostly founded by some ex-alumni.
Most people know about Stanford/Caltech/UCB and the Silicon Valley connection. In fact, Sun Microsystems is basically owned by ex-Stanford comp sci grads.

My question is, do we have anything like that in Nigeria? Is there really an 'old boys network'? Do we have firms primarily dominated by ex-alumni of some certain institutions? In my early job-seeking days, I came up a number of times against an 'Ife clique', in places like Telnet, Spar Aerospace (later GS Telecom), Philips Projects Center, and even Resourcery. These days, I hardly hear of such things among the fresh guys coming up. Though I hear Renaissance Capital is dominated by Ife people, that's just about it. All the places that I have worked, and indeed most organizations these days, people join from just about anywhere.

I think it's not so bad to have an old boys network. The only thing I have not seen in Nigeria, is what I consider to be the next level: old boys actually going on to set up their own outfit, and taking it up there. With all the Ife domination of Telnet and GS Telecom, I haven't still heard of any homegrown outfit founded by a bunch of Ife guys competing with those chaps. Pretty disappointing if you ask me.

What do you guys think?

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