virgin graduate mechanics I mean. These ten were a curious mixture but one sure thing was that none of them came from the state our office resides in ( Enugu State) which has since become the ‘yahoo’ capital of the country .

Loaded with ‘letter writers’ whose means of livelihood are dubious and with

enough hotels to quarter all the female students in the country , the town offered little

support in terms of graduate trainees ( based on our representative sample of seminar

attendants).

• The ten virgins- Blame it all on cash.

Each one of the ten attendants had the same problem. Guess? Yes, Cash !!!

Some swore their parents were dead, other insisted that though there parents were alive that they did not have enough money to train them. Most had a family size of nineteen and were also the first issue in their respective families.

Some said they could pay for the training program if only they could acquire the skills first. Some insisted that they did not have accommodation and that if they paid, then they would have no money to eat as we feed their brain.

We provided acceptable accommodation for these ones on seeing the fire in their eyes and after an open door meeting we decided to allow those that could not pay if and only if those that could pay allowed them.

• There are still nice guys!!!

Contrary to our expectation, the two guys that paid agreed to allow the other people to

participate. It is important to note that the program was already heavily subsidized by a

sister company as part of the research and development program, what we were really

looking for was a commitment fee to justify the three months that will be spent.

Just as we were about to start the program , we received a call from a FUTO (Federal University of Technology , Owerri) mechanical engineering graduate who said he heard about the seminar from a friend who heard it from a friends uncles brother and wanted to join. This guy paid cash on arrival though complained about accommodation since he did not live in town.

We quickly provided accommodation for free. However, we did not see any fire in his eyes. Perhaps the fire was in his belly.