free37:

seconded, there's no such thing as luck, thread for the defeated and quitters!

Nigerians lack good entrepreneur skills.
look.at our elites how many of them on business or invest in new ideas that create wealth. eg We still important toothpick,eggs,foods, if we had entreprenuers they would harness this opportunities and the younger ones can learn from them. you have people who work in multinational firms they are only intrested in buying cars, go on vacation.
but forget that . that the very firm were they work was started by some one.
Starting and growing a business especially a multinational requires people with high IQ. and that's what we lack as a nation. people who can not see opportunites. sometimes you just need a good idea not capital.

Foresight is something that exists
within people of higher IQ

"Dream Big, and Die Trying."

SillyeRabbit:
First, let our government provide constant electricity.

That is the foundation!

Charism:
Entrepreneurship seems to be the order of the day today, the press glorifies it, government officials put lots of emphasis on it as the only way out of poverty, its even a compulsory course for all university students. NYSC is all about it, from your afternoon lectures in camp, to your SAEED. But is it really worth it? Are they telling us the truth, or is it mere propaganda by politicians to give excuses for their failure?
Daily we are bombarded by happy ending stories of people who made it by starting up their business, we are told to emulate the likes of Dangote, Otedola, mike Adenuga. But the bitter truth is that not everyone will make it like Dangote. As a matter of fact the chances of Success is Very rare.
People who make it are the lucky ones, lucky in the sense that the have opportunities that others never had or will never have which they harnessed to their advantage.
Opportunities like capital, good location, skills, business climate, experience e.t.c. These variable are not things you have control over. Take for example Dangote started his business with just #500,000 (a huge amount of money during the 70's) given to him by his uncle Dantata (one of the richest men in nigeria at that time) who also groomed him in the tricks of business management. There are many people who have beautiful business plans out there, but no capital to fund them. Even when the capital is available, you don't any experience about the business climate of the business you are venturing into, its like a blind man crossing the highway unaided.
The truth of the matter is that not everyone is meant to be entreperneurs, if you believe in the determination, nothing-can-stop-me mantra, you might probably end up with a small food-stuff shop/kiosk business, or like the road side akara seller whose income would not be enough for you to start a family. If it were that easy, then our proffesors of business administration in our universitys, would have been top business moguls by now.
Truth be told, our politicians need to sit up! And make economic policies to would encourage investment and growth. If the economy is favourable, both entrepreneurs and employees, would be better-off.

I disagree to the max. Take America as a prime example. America started as Agro-based economy, started off as colonists who came for land so they that they could farm. They believed that through this they could be able to attain economic independence away from the control of the Monarchies in Europe. Truly Agriculture became a very vital industry for the growth of colonies filled with immense prospects, it led to powerful plantation owners buying slaves from Africa to work on their cotton farms. The North Eastern part of the country developed cotton harvesting machines and also machines to turn them into finish products............ these private ventures contributed to the full industrialization of America.

The Government is the people, if the people are poor, then the government will be poor. Governments make money from taxation, if Nigerians are not innovative enough to come up with ways to stop consuming products coming from other places and start producing to start getting money in exchange for our products then the country will remain the same or even get worse.

A consumer is an entrepreneur of some sort.

The lack of infrastructure or security or power or proper transportation is a business opportunity. Business opportunities are accented by lack. Drug dealers and arms dealers are entrepreneurs.

It is no surprise that the biggest economies control the biggest commodity -- Capital. Lots of capital is what makes Coca Cola and Pepsi sell sugar water to hundreds of countries.

The real discussion should be about capital or the lack it.

This thread is a little Bias it is more like saying only looking at the disadvantages of entrepreneurship

oneolajire:
Nigeria is a country where all big investors have no inventions (tangible or intangible) to their credit. Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Michael Dell, Thomas Edison and the likes all have products to patent, but most entrepreneurs we have in Nigeria have invented nothing and have made it through dubious means. 

Entrepreneurship/vocational education is government's way of telling the youth and graduates that she (the government) lacks industrialisation and job creation strategies while the youth have been left to fate.

Entrepreneurship/vocational education is government's way of making the youth/graduates look intellectually lazy and burdensome as well as telling them that they are have been abandoned in the valley of unemployment. Unemployment rate increased simply because government owned industries and companies get strangulated by the python of corruption as well as the refusal of the government to establish new ones.

Entrepreneurship in advanced countries is about innovations, inventions, improvements, expansions, people and institutional empowerment. Modern and sophisticated skills are being utilised to manufacture goods and services which culminates into abundant job creation.

Entrepreneurship in Nigeria is of the graduate job seeker told to engage in bead making, soap making, hair dressing, laundry and so on. These businesses have neither inventions nor advancement to add to the business practice and the economy, as they also have little or no impact on the international market. 

Entrepreneurship in Nigeria is also of the rich that colludes with the government to defraud the masses, destroy public corporations and infrastructures in order for them to import alternative goods. The rich set up few enterprises and often pay peanuts to their employees in order to increase their wealth; culminating into increase in poverty level and underemployment in the country.  

The government of advanced countries often invest billion of dollars on education and research, so they always have intellectuals who will offer innovative products and services to the world. These products and services are initially developed into small scale businesses as they many even grow into large enterprises. While Nigeria keeps wasting hard earned funds on Small and Medium Scale (SME) development, yet the businesses are nowhere to be found.

Only an insane person will keep doing the same thing the same way and expect a different result. Am yet to see a nation that got developed by investing so little on the education of her youth and students but spend so much on SME propaganda. Still searching for a nation that gave nothing more than mere, non-professional, common, stark and non-sophisticated skills/training to her youth and achieved rapid industrial development.

Why should we buy a trailer engine, fix it in a car and try to make it compete with an aircraft? Why should we make people earn mere skills and expect them to compete with foreign sophisticated technologies? We have to know that the issue of local production of goods and services is a serious competetion with the developed nations.

Some questions for the proponents of entrepreneurship/vocational education.
 When will out textile, fashion and leather industry be able to make products of international standard? When will a Nigerian mechanic be able to manufacture car engines and other motor parts? When will our furniture makers be able to make furniture that will compete with ones made overseas? When will a computer repairer be able to produce motherboards, memorycards, monitors, just to mention a few?

Take a look at the furniture industry in Nigeria, you'll discover it is almost dead because foreign furniture has flooded the Nigerian market. Foreign furniture makers have been able to introduce much variety of products with various designs, even at exorbitant prices, yet people still buy them. Imported furniture  attains this much because modern machines are regularly produced to make new designs of furniture, but here in Nigeria, we only buy simple tools, we don't engage in design and manufacture of  machines/tools to be used in the furniture industry, so we are perpetually making furniture that cannot compete with the foreign ones. It is only engineering provide modern machines, stack entrepreneurship cannot.

Entrepreneurship and and vocational education has never helped Nigeria in the manufacture of modern machines for production of finished goods that can compete favourably with imported ones. The best entrepreneurship has offered us is to use social media means to engage in selling of imported products as well as setting up of few businesses with the use of foreign machines. It is appaling for government to still keep preaching the sermon that can never bring solutions to us.

Every sector of the Nigerian economy has been badly affected by the erroneous policy of entrepreneurship and vocational education. From the agricultural sector to the transportation sector, from manufacturing to education, from construction to entertainment, name it, we have rendered our nation incapacitated when it comes to production of goods and services. There can never be abundant job opportunities as long as we keep executing this lame practice. 

I wonder why we have not giving so much vocational training to professional operating as doctors, nurses and pharmacist in the medical field. We give this set of people trainings that can make them compete favourably with their foreign counterpart. I believe it should appear proper to the government to substitute entrepreneurship and vocational education with the training they receive in the teaching hospitals.  The government (after emptying the laboratories and workshops of polytechniques and universities) substituted requisite training for our engineers and scientist with entrepreneurship and vocational training, so they are rendered handicapped when it comes to provision of modern goods and services as well as job creation.

It is high time we changed our job creation policy of entrepreneurship and vocational studies to provision of qualitative education at all levels, especially science and technology education so that Nigerian graduates would possess requisite modern and sophisticated skills for our nation and the world market at large. It is only qualitative education and intensive research that can initiate intellectual thinking for creation of innovative goods and services.
 
Entrepreneurship and vocational studies have been found to have contributed immensely only to economy of nations with massive investments in education and research. Singapore and South Korea are the examples of nations that have eradicated illiteracy and have invested huge funds into science and technology education, so entrepreneurship thrives there.

Let the laboratories and workshops of our secondary schools and higher institutions be adequately equipped with modern and facilities so as to provide avenues for learning practicals. We need to replicate the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg who utilised the qualitative education they obtained in the tetiary institutions to create worldwide business ventures in their fields.

Glad to see ur post, glad tosee that Nigerians are now aware of the scam called entrepreneurship. God bless Nigeria

Are u a student or a working class?
This write up is of tremendous help to anyone reading it!
Intelligent post

maxwell767:
I strongly agree with you........... Every where u go u hear something like "entrepreneurship" meaning that after spending so many years in the university hoping to get a good job that will enable u to to start up ur life... U will be then be advise to go into skills and acquisition... While they stay on top there without retirement.... If I had wanted to go into entrepreneurship... I won't have spent my time @ the university.... I would have jst use the money for my education and start up a business...

Having education means widening ur horizon... Not necessarily how to make money (in my opinion)
Education involves learning which implies that it is a relative change in behaviour as a result of experience.
That's why education is meant for all ages e.g adult education

I do not support your views.

Point 1, not everybody can be like Adenuga or Dangote or Otedola. They are billionaires. Not every entrepreneur will be a billionaire but most entrepreneurs can lift their family out of poverty, they can employ between five to ten people. That is he reason why govt is hammering on entrepreneurship, to create multiple jobs and not to maker anybody Dangote. Dangote is mentioned just to inspire you, to set standards for you. Not every successful entrepreneur will be dangote, in fact, maybe 0.000000000001% of entrepreneurs will replace Dangote

Bakare19:
Nice one

I will have passion towards anything that makes me good money !! Ask the Igbo men/boys,hunger is a great motivator

Bakare19:
Nice one

I will have passion towards anything that makes me good money !! Ask the Igbo men/boys,hunger is a great motivator

All I can say is that many buoyant economy are not only foreign investor/government driven. Masses has a larger role to play in this. Honestly, the igbos has killed this issue. That's why I like them. We cant encourage our people only for civil service work. We need to try things by our selves. There are many untapped business in Nigeria. Our robust economy suppose to work for our own advantage but instead its working for the foreigners. When We are still little, the economy was more buoyant than this simply because its largely controlled by the masses(Goldsmiths, Tailors, Welders, Shoe makers, food vendors and so on). Today, you hardly see these trade in existence.

WHO ARE WE TO BLADE? GOVERNMENT?

Hmmm, our fore fathers really tried discovering things we met in this world. WHAT HAVE YOU DISCOVERED/MODIFIED OR INVENTED.

Please lets start something now and stop discouraging ourselves. Look at China today. there many entrepreneurial business going on there. Awake your sleeping giants, its waiting for you to triggered.

I am a research and development scientist, I have worked for many companies including Unilever. I need a group of ten serious Nigerians that are ready to discover business that move our economy. I have so many of them, you may also have some. Lets stop talk talk talk and start the work. its never too late. Our government will be begging us for help sooner or later if we can start this. I'm so serious about it.

Thanks
Bosun
08062447395
bsnola001@gmail.com