₦airaland Forum

The Scarcity of entrepreneurship in the Nigeria economy is worrisome and there is an urgent need to tame the monster and arrest the ugly trend before it degenerates further.

Entrepreneurship is a process that involves many activities like establishment of a business, operating the business, and sustaining the recorded success. It also involves the utilisation of resources and materials which will eventually lead to the creation of a venture.

The entrepreneur is therefore an innovator who searches for change, responds to it and exploits it as an opportunity. He adds to human capital formation or development. The entrepreneur must first imagine what he desires, then he wills that which he imagines and at last, he creates what he wills.

Majority have determined to travel a short toad to success. Nigeria is poverty ravaged, and poverty is a manifestation of low national income and low per capita income. Majority of the people live below the poverty line and so are ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed and ill-educated.

The pressures of indigenisation, privatisation and commercialisation in Nigeria provided reasons for new and existing entrepreneurs to come into business with a desire to make profit useful in acquiring power and getting closer to seat of government.

Opportunities abound in various sectors; they must be established and tapped into. Surprisingly, able and energetic young men are busy roaming the streets looking for white collar jobs instead of thinking of what they can do for themselves and the country at large. This may not be their fault in its entirety because there is no enabling environment for this type of venture.

However, opportunities are not in short supply but entrepreneurs capable of capitalizing on existing business or creating new ones are in short supply.

School syllabus at various levels from primary to higher institutions must offer courses on the development of entrepreneurial skills. In other words, there should be inclusion of entrepreneurship as a subject at every level of education.

Entrepreneurial skills should be adequately acquired in marketing, personnel, accounting and production management. Students must be exposed to courses in management development and organisation behaviour. The objective must be to make them generalists instead of specialists.

Government has no business being in business, it should regulate. This is so because public enterprises in Nigeria are riddled with corruption, eye-service, make-belief and shameless profligacy.

Academic certificates could be accepted as collateral with low interest rate on obtainable loans with a one year moratorium to encourage entrepreneurs.

Majority of churches and mosques have enormous resources for economic development of their members. They therefore need to encourage the entrepreneurship pursuits of their members. More so, one can serve the true God better if one is economically viable and financially buoyant. In fact, religious organizations should emulate Baptist, Redeemer, Winners Chapel, Ahmadiyya, Ansarudeen, etc in the provision of support for entrepreneurship through the establishment of schools, hospitals, etc.

The prosperity of Nigeria depends on the number of its entrepreneurial citizens in the area of innovation, creativity and character.

If the best of social infrastructures are provided, the richest of development plan introduced, the most suitable capital granting schemes or agencies established, nothing developmentally worthwhile may be achieved if the competence of entrepreneurs are not developed, enhanced, motivated both technically and managerially.

Entrepreneurs must endeavour to be socially or morally responsible so as not to undermine their success in the long run. They must apply the principle of greatest good for greatest number by maximizing the good and minimizing the evil in their dealings. They need to put it at the back of their minds that business is grown from loss to Cost-Volume-Profit, otherwise known as Break Even Point and finally to profit.