The management of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University (NAU) Awka has organized training for no fewer than 7000 fresh students in leadership and entrepreneurship programme.The Dean Students Affairs of the institution, Prof Stanley Udedi said in Awka that resource persons including captains of industries, politicians and Director Chike Okoli Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies, Professor Ngozi Anyikwa briefed the students on various topics during the training.

According to the Dean, the event which took place at the Basil Oli Hostel, had the theme: ‘Leadership and Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Education’, pointing out that the fresh students were exposed to diverse topics, ranging from acquiring entrepreneurial skills while in school, and encouraged the freshmen to take advantage of Chike Okoli Centre’s capacity as a foremost skill acquisition centre to build themselves as creators of labour.

Prof Udedi said they were warned not to tow lazy path considering the high unemployment situation in the country, just as he highlighted some of the measures put in place to ensure that students remain the primary focus of the university.

He added: “One of such measures included inauguration of a Student Education Endowment Fund to help indigent students that can’t afford their tuition or living expenses, with the hope they pay back when they graduate and are gainfully employed”.He commended the NAU Vice-Chancellor and Chairman of the event, Prof. Joseph Eberendu Ahaneku, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academics, Prof Charles Esimone for their support to make the event worthwhile.

While inaugurating a committee that would look into how such funds will be sourced and administered in a sustainable way, Prof Udedi further reiterated his commitment to ensuring that students study in a friendly environment that is devoid of harassment whilst their needs are promptly responded to.The Vice- Chancellor of Unizik Prof. Joseph Eberendu Ahaneku, in his opening remark expressed delight at the huge turnout of students and commended the students for being the lucky few to be admitted out of thousands of candidates that applied to the University.

http://www.akelicious.com/2018/03/nnamdi-azikiwe-varsity-organises.html

Nice move... hope say all no be just for mouth.

Young people of Nigeria know what to do to make money legally. Many young Nigerians are not lazy. Many already have skills - dressmaking, shoe making, culinary, arts and crafts etc

The problem is enabling environment (electricity, water, adequate transportation system etc) and government policies (loans).

No need for all these long talk lectures, just equip them rightly. Chikena!

Great Zikites

Great zikites!

Long live unizik

The North is busy training future Boko Haram members

.

?

UNIZIK is Nigeria's torch bearer university.

Why is this news?




If they don't, who will?

Yeah, that's my mentor, Dr Stan Udedi now Professor. I trust him, he used to be my lecturer, my political mentor when I was in BCH Dept in Unizik. He's a very good man who love his Students a lot, and can do anything that will add value to the lives of the students.

I pray those students maximize that opportunity.

Nice one by my school, we lead others follow

Beautiful.
We can afford to be lazy job seekers.
Be your own boss

edunwablog:
The management of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University (NAU) Awka has organized training for no fewer than 7000 fresh students in leadership and entrepreneurship programme.The Dean Students Affairs of the institution, Prof Stanley Udedi said in Awka that resource persons including captains of industries, politicians and Director Chike Okoli Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies, Professor Ngozi Anyikwa briefed the students on various topics during the training.

According to the Dean, the event which took place at the Basil Oli Hostel, had the theme: ‘Leadership and Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Education’, pointing out that the fresh students were exposed to diverse topics, ranging from acquiring entrepreneurial skills while in school, and encouraged the freshmen to take advantage of Chike Okoli Centre’s capacity as a foremost skill acquisition centre to build themselves as creators of labour.

Prof Udedi said they were warned not to tow lazy path considering the high unemployment situation in the country, just as he highlighted some of the measures put in place to ensure that students remain the primary focus of the university.

He added: “One of such measures included inauguration of a Student Education Endowment Fund to help indigent students that can’t afford their tuition or living expenses, with the hope they pay back when they graduate and are gainfully employed”.He commended the NAU Vice-Chancellor and Chairman of the event, Prof. Joseph Eberendu Ahaneku, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academics, Prof Charles Esimone for their support to make the event worthwhile.

While inaugurating a committee that would look into how such funds will be sourced and administered in a sustainable way, Prof Udedi further reiterated his commitment to ensuring that students study in a friendly environment that is devoid of harassment whilst their needs are promptly responded to.The Vice- Chancellor of Unizik Prof. Joseph Eberendu Ahaneku, in his opening remark expressed delight at the huge turnout of students and commended the students for being the lucky few to be admitted out of thousands of candidates that applied to the University.

http://www.akelicious.com/2018/03/nnamdi-azikiwe-varsity-organises.html

this is the true reason why leadership and entrepreneurship programme don produce any tangible results in nigeria

na wash anything organized by public varsities is not comprehensive.

Too much talk de dis country

flyca:
Young people of Nigeria know what to do to make money legally. Many young Nigerians are not lazy. Many already have skills - dressmaking, shoe making, culinary, arts and crafts etc

The problem is enabling environment (electricity, water, adequate transportation system etc) and government policies (loans).

No need for all these long talk lectures, just equip them rightly. Chikena!

no mind them u go hear pple are lazy mtcheww

Entrepreneurship in Nig is a scam. Part 1


https://www.nairaland.com/2983340/entrepreneurship-nigeria-scam-multiplier-poverty

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?

Did America achieved greatness by emphasising on vocational trainings on how to make shoe polish, bake cake, produce detergents, event decorations , frying akara and establishment of football viewing centres? Did Britain get it right by teaching her youth how to start a beer palour and salon businesses or by ensuring technological dynamism? I wondered if it is mere phone repair training was what brought China among world's  mobile phone producers. Over and over again, I see entrepreneurship and vocational education as a scam.

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 that provides 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 given 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.

Real entrepreneurship is when Nigerian graduates of electrical engineers can produce transformers, power generation turbines, alternators, televisions from local technologies. Metallurgical engineers must be able to produce steel for oil and gas pipelines as well as in train and car manufacturing. Combustion engines, pumps, hydraulic and pneumatic parts must be what our mechanical engineers must be able to manufacture from their companies. Businesses of agricultural science graduates should able to feed the nation cos they should empowered to do so. This is what is called real entrepreneurship.

Businesses that leads to industrialisation are offshoots of science and technological discoveries and investments. The kind of entrepreneurship Nigeria needs is one in which Nigerian chemical engineers can set up refineries and petrochemical companies with the aid local resources. I would also love to see mobile phones, computers and other information technology gadgets developed and commercialised by Nigerian graduates of computer science. 

The entrepreneurship that Nigeria needs is one in which local engineering enterprises will be able to metamorphous  into multinationals like General Electric, Ford Motors, Chevron, Microsoft Corporations,Tata Steel and the likes. This is how we can solve the problem of unemployment as well as put an end to the massive importation of good in Nigeria. However, with this, Nigeria will become industrialised and be listed among the developed nations of the world.

oneolajire2000@yahoo.co.uk

https://www.nairaland.com/3102449/part-2-entrepreneurship-scam-nigeria


Entrepreneurship in Nig is a scam. Part 2


Entrepreneurship is the only solution the government has shown for the eradication of mass unemployment. Entrepreneurship in Nigeria is scam, an inherent failure, because it has failed to create jobs while it has also handicapped our graduates and youths from creating jobs.


Firstly, why are graduates being persuaded into vocational education and entrepreneurship? The reason why graduates are told to engage in entrepreneurship (businesses such as making pop-corn, liquid soap, plantain chips, cakes and so on) is not of a fact that there are no jobs, it is because graduates are poorly educated to create jobs.


Consider a typical electrical engineering graduate of a Nigerian university/polytechnic, who has adequate classroom/theoretical training but lacks requisite practical training, would find it difficult securing a job that needs practical experiences in electrical engineering. Likewise, he will find it almost impossible to set up an electrical engineering business. 


However, the difficulty in securing job opportunities as well as job creation is not only limited to electrical engineers, it is a fact that graduates of other courses are not left out in this precarious situation. The electrical engineering graduates are supposed to be in the fore-front of design and manufacturing of solar panels, electricty generating turbines, transformers and other power generation, transmission and distribution facilities to help solve the power problem in Nigeria. Unfortunately, the typical Nigerian electrical engineering graduate went to a campus blessed with empty labs and obsolete worshops, so how could he have acquired practical skills to invent, innovate or replicate?


Employers don't make things easy for the fresh graduate, cos it is being required of him to have about five years working experience before he can get employed. As a result of the inability of successive governments to provide jobs for fresh graduates, entrepreneurship and vocational education was postulated. So the electrical engineering graduate starts thinking of how to become an entrepreneur in car wash, frying akara, hair dressing, laundry and so on. What an abberation!


His counterpart in advanced contries has both classroom and lab/workshop experiences, so he is welcome in any establishment over there. He doesn't need to have one year of field experience before he can secure a job opportunity.  He is equipped to innovate, invent or replicate any electrical engineering component as a result facilities available to him. He has the enabling environment commercialise his prototype, starting as a small business then growing to become a global venture.


At this juncture, I have categorised  the types of entrepreneurs that exists in the world into four.
1. Capital entrepreneurs: They are people with capital to invest in any kind of business they love. Many are into importation of finished goods while some are into manufacturing and service provision. Some are 'Dangote-like', because they invite expatriates as well as import machines to set up large companies. They 'sometimes' invest in research (especially in developed countries) in order to have innovative products.


2. Conditional Entrepreneurs: ‎They are people who became overnight entrepreneurs due to unemployment, profiteering and availability of extra income. They are mostly novice when it comes to entrepreneurship. This is the category our graduates belong, as they are being forced to acquire vocational skills because the government has no job for them.


3. Innovative entrepreneurs. They are products of qualitative education as well as research in science and technology. They make prototype products, form enterprises by commercialising their products, later grow them into large scale ventures. Microsoft Corporation, General Electric and Facebook are few examples of innovative entrepreneurship.


4. Traditional entrepreneurs: These are the entrepreneurs we have always been having around, such as restaurants, retailers, taxi, drivers,  bricklayers, event decorators, bakers, carpenters and mechanics. Only few small scale entrepreneurship of these kind of do grow into medium ones. No nation has ever achieved development by laying emphasis on this type of entrepreneurship.


‎Capital entrepreneurship as well as enormous investment in innovative entrepreneurship are the two major focus of nations that have achieved rapid development. Nigeria spends so much on the development of traditional and conditional  entrepreneurship but has totally neglected the development of innovative entrepreneurs. This is why poverty and unemployment is being multiplied in Nigeria. Capital entrepreneurs are so few in Nigeria, so their imapct on the economy is very limited.
‎

The mere conditional entrepreneurship we practice in Nigeria is 'kobo wise, Naira foolish'! The government saves so much money (spend too little on education) by denying students qualitative training in higher institutions, and then offering huge loans during NYSC in order to start fictitous businesses. The innocent corps members do a lot of brain-storming on the kind of businesses they can start, but alas, only a handful can think make positive attempt. So how do we measure the success of the meagre investment in schooling, when students graduate without job creation capabilities?


Entrepreneurship is a failed remedy. A remedy provided for unemployed graduates after they have spent many years in the higher institutions without having job creation capabilities. Graduates don't need monies to be turned chin-chin entrepreneurs overnight, they needed the monies for intensive trainings, highly eqipped laboratories and workshop while as undergraduates.


Most people do not know that our kind of entrepreneurship is responsible for the perpetual importation of toothpicks, soaps, wheelbarrows, vegetable oil, rice and so on.  There are only two ways these products can be massively produced in Nigeria, it is either capital entrepreneurs import the machines to make the products or the innovative entrepreneurs invent (or replicate imported) machines. Unfortunately, capital entrepreneurs prefer importing finished goods to importing production machines while our graduates are poorly equipped to invent (or commercialize their prototypes) machines as well.


The present fall in the value of naira is basically a problem caused by the types of entrepreneurship we practice. The major foreign exchange earner Nigeria has is crude oil, but capital entrepreneurs import almost every other item, even items produced locally in large quantities, such as toothpaste, shoes, palm oil, drinks and furniture. For example, if Nigeria earned 1000 dollars daily when crude oil was sold at about 100dollars per barrel in 2013, entrepreneurs made demand of goods worth 500 dollars same day, no thanks  items they needed to import.


 But Nigeria now earns 400 dollars daily in 2016 when crude oil sells for 40 dollars per barrel and dollar demand for importation remains the same. It is practically impossible for the government to release the whole income for importation. So this results in scarcity of the dollar which culminates into attempt to devalue the naira. Capital entrepreneurs keep importing almost everything cos they make huge profit from the perpetual importation.


Nigeria's natural resources have been left to lie untapped over the years, no thanks to the continuous policy of capital entrepreneurship which awaits foreign investors and capital entrepreneurs invest before resources are tapped. Asian Tigers have achieved rapid development by laying less emphasis on traditional entrepreneurship, but by making entrepreneurs out of the professions of their students and graduates as well as providing conducive environment for foreign investors. 


Higher institutions and research centers in the Asia Tiger nations are heavily equipped for students to acquire practical knowledge and this has culminated into having graduates who later created jobs. Graduates of higher institutions in Asia Tiger nations have become innovative entrepreneurs in line with the courses they studied on campuses. 


Though they have little natural resources yet they are known to have SMEs in hi-tech products and not in beer palour, cake baking, and hair dressing businesses. Nigerians have erroneously believed that SME was used to develop the Asian Tiger nations without finding out the types of goods and services they produce as well as how their production capabilities were built.


Undergraduates studying agricultural courses should be empowered (both with finance and modern implements) to own farms before and after graduation. I believe funding of our agriculture student/graduates is possible since the government can pay huge sums to medical students during their internships. We need to fix the graduates of agriculture into our agricultural sector, as in people who can access information, modern tools and techniques for abundant job production as it is done in advanced countries.


Finally, all I can see is that tackling the problems of unemployment and poverty may be difficult unless there is a paradigm shift in our job creation approach from having more traditional and conditional entrepreneurs to turning our graduates into innovative entrepreneurs.

.