Chemistry Entrepreneurship: A Tool For Job And Wealth Creation.

The journey into the world of employment can take different forms. For some, it may be easy while for others it might be quite challenging.
It is good to dream big, but is another thing to actualize your dream. But GOD has made provision for all dreams to come to pass, if we follow the right principles.
Enrolment in tertiary institutions in Nigeria is increasing day-in-day out. The reality is that government and the organized private sectors, do not have enough capacity to absorb the graduates of these institutions. The National Bureau of Statistics put the unemployment rate in the first quarters of 2014 at 42%. The situation of unemployment in Nigeria is indeed alarming. The graduate unemployment problem has generated several other socio-economic problems in the country manifesting in the following: militancy in the Niger Delta, political thuggery among youths, increased rate of armed robbery and kidnapping and even the Boko Haram saga.
But what could be the problem? Is it that Nigerian graduates are really unemployable? Hmmm! I think some thing is wrong some where. I was listening to a preacher and he said " they is difference between knowledge, understanding and wisdom". Knowledge: is the gathering of facts. Understanding: is to know the facts you have gathered. Wisdom: is the application of the facts you have known.
Now the questions are: did we really understand the knowledge we acquired in school? How can we convert this knowledge to wealth? At this point I will like to use my course (CHEMISTRY) as a key study.
Everytime we keep hearing:What is not Chemistry? Can there be a Day without Chemistry? Bagley (2014) defined Chemistry as the study of matter, its properties, how and why substances combine or separate to form other substances, and how substances interact with energy. Chemistry can also be defined as a branch of physical science that studies matter in terms of: Composition, Structure, Properties and Transformation/Change. Matter is composed of atoms and molecules; chemistry studies the interactions and transformations of matter. Remember, matter is neither created nor destroyed; what we have is transformation of matter. Chemistry is central to natural sciences as such sometimes referred to as the Central Science.
Understanding basic chemistry concepts is important for almost every profession. There is chemistry in any discipline you can imagine: Biology (Biochemistry); Pharmacy (Pharmaceutical Chemistry); Food (Food Chemistry); Agriculture (Agricultural Chemistry); Plant Science (Phytochemistry); Geology (Geochemistry); Radiology (Radiochemistry); Zoology (Zoochemistry); Astrology (Astrochemistry); etc. to this extent, it is good to know that chemistry is everything and everywhere.
It is interesting to note that Chemistry can be found in the kitchen, restaurant/fast food; laundry, beauty salon, garden, swimming pool, hospital, hotel and beer parlor, toilet and bathroom, air, bakery, water corporation, power station, military formations/barracks, photo laboratory, paint and textile stores, business centres, house roof, inside ship car, train and aircraft, wastes dump sites, fire station, barbing salon, artist shop, plumbers shop, carpentry workshop, coal pit, quarries, and other areas of human endeavor.It is accepted that Chemistry is everything and Chemistry is everywhere but why are Chemists not getting employed? Ordinarily one will think that Chemists should be hot cakes in the labor market since they have roles to perform in virtually all areas of human endeavors. Chemists have a wider range of entrepreneural opportunities than any other discipline; if graduates of other disciplines can leave their professions and embraces production, then why are the so called Chemists are so passionate about the paper results with the sole aim of working in an oil coy. It is high time we start embracing reality and forget about those big molecular structures, the balancing and the backward and forward reactions of reactants to form products. The real equation is balanced when you add chemicals together to produce soap, paint, detergents, cement, vaseline, fertilizers, custard powders, extraction and refining of edible oils, etc; which in turn lead to wealth and job creation for the teamly unemployed youths.
From chemistry entrepreneurship point of view, Chemists with great ideas, with a little training on entrepreneurship, are supposed to be job creators rather than job seekers. So I think chemistry entrepreneurship should be integrated as an integral aspect of chemistry curriculum in Nigerian institutions; as regard to that, I think FULafia is doing a great job.

I rep my Uni #FULafia# a new generation University; driven by #Integrity, Innovation and Excellence#.

Don't mind my vocabulary, English is communication.

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