CHRISTIAN IN THE MARKET PLACE

THE STORY OF COSCHARIS

The Chairman/CEO of Coscharis Group of Companies and sole distributor for BMW in Nigeria, Dr. Cosmas Maduka, has
a success story filled with intrigues. Imagine a seven-year old boy going to serve as an automobile apprentice because of
poverty!
Who could ever have imagined the outcome of such for this Nnewi-born business tycoon?

The Coscharis story is a story of how we
turned a two hundred naira; one man business into a conglomerate with over N15billion in shareholders
funds in under 30years .
My friends, I tell you that unless you have a
vivid picture in your mind of what you want to create; you will not be passionate about pursuing and
actualizing the goal. The Coscharis Group’s journey to becoming a conglomerate is the actualization of a dream.

At age four, Cosmas Maduka lost his father, and therefore
started hawking bean cake (akara) and climbing palm trees
before the age of five, to assist his mother. Three years later when life became more miserable, his mother had to send
him to her parents to lessen the task of providing for him and
the other three children. By the time he was seven, little Cosmas was withdrawn from Elementary Three to serve as an
automobile apprentice to a maternal uncle in Lagos.
“My maternal uncle lived at Ebutte-Metta in Lagos and had a store at 88 Griffy Street, near Oyingbo Bus-stop. He took me
to work as an apprentice for him, and people laughed at me and questioned what I could learn at my age”, he recalls.
His uncle had no home of his own but stayed with a friend,
and Cosmas spent the nights in the store while he went home with the key.

As common with many young people, Cosmas had along the
line drifted from the Catholic faith shown him early in life by
his mother and had taken to trivialities like smoking and drinking. He, however, found Christ again through a friend
who led him to the Redeemed Christian Church of God at Ebutte-Metta while still in Lagos, and, this time, he was dead
set on serving the Lord.

Something eventful happened at Nnewi in
1975, and that marked a new beginning for
young Cosmas. “While at Nnewi at age 14, we had a church camp which I went
for and when my boss came on the fourth day to the shop and didn’t meet
me, he sent for me and my elder brother that evening and then gave me
N200, saying I should go and concentrate on my new found faith.
“It was done to punish me, but having known a little about God, I looked at him in the eyes and said, `God hardened the
heart of Pharaoh to show His might in the land of Egypt. I served you well, and I don’t deserve this. But if this is what
you have to offer me, five years from today, you will be
amazed at what you’re going to see out of this”, he painfully recalls.

After several years “I formed Coscharis from a
combination of three letter words from my name and that of my wife, Charity. The real breakthrough came in that same
year in 1982 when the Nigerian government decided to grant
import licenses to ten motor companies and Coscharis  Motors was selected! We’ve continued to expand since then,
and we now have several subsidiaries”, he explains.