Entrepreneurship is a process that enables one to be able to identify opportunities and gather enough resources to be able to tap into those opportunities. In other words, it is all about creating enterprises and creating products that are meeting demands or needs of the society.
The problem of unemployment today in Nigeria is becoming worrisome and alarming as universities on yearly basis produces graduates who hope to secure jobs after spending many years of struggling in the University as undergraduates.
Some of these Universities graduates were in capacitated, they could not start businesses on their own rather they depend on white collar jobs in government or private companies circle which are often non-existent.
The concept of entrepreneurship will help the society to solve a lot of its problems. The National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Federal Ministry of Education recently started a process to identify and solve the problem of unemployment in Nigeria. This was as a result of the directive of the present administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, whose focus of attention is on wealth creation. Therefore it is not easy to create wealth without creating enterprises because enterprises are the wealth creator. The process, however led to a lot of stakeholders meetings that were held and with the contribution of World Bank that is partnering with the Federal Ministry of Education and the NUC in this respect. They came up with a resolution of their meeting late January, a meeting of all Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, the National Universities Commission and the Federal Ministry of Education and all other stakeholders in the universities education in Nigeria. Part of their resolutions of the meeting was that solution to unemployment particularly graduates unemployment is for entrepreneurship to be introduced in all Nigerian Universities.
So at the end of that meeting it was resolved that all Nigerian universities must start a centre for entrepreneurship, that all Nigerian Universities must also start training people in entrepreneurship. In other word, they stressed the need to build capacity for them to train people in entrepreneurship. The Federal Ministry of Education through the Federal Government and the NUC also pledged to support Nigerian Universities in the creation of this centre for entrepreneurship.
Before that time, a lot of Universities have started the centre. By statistics, out of the total number of Universities the country have, then the country has 104 Universities when the meeting was being held around January, but now the Nigeria has 117 Universities because the Federal Government had created 9 Universities while 4 additional private Universities were licensed recently, which made the numbers to 117 now. As at that time, there were 104 Universities in Nigeria and out of that 104 Universities that obeyed the directive of the National Universities Commission in 2007 that all Nigerian Universities must include entrepreneurship as a matter of must in their curriculum, only 19 Universities out of the 104 Universities that were existing as at that time before the creation of this new 13, had actually started centres for entrepreneurship.
Among the Universities that established the Centre are, the University of Ilorin, the Kwara State University (KWASU), as well as few other that have the centre in place to expose their students to entrepreneurship skills in order to make them employers and not employees after graduation.
At the University of Ilorin, students of the University were train at the first semester of 300 level which is their penultimate year, a course called Graduate Self Employment (GSE) which is compulsory for all students. This would enable them to learn the required skills for them to be self employed.
Speaking on the entrepreneurship, the Director Centre for Entrepreneurship, Kwara State University, Malete, Doctor Muritala Awodun, said an entrepreneurship is a person who has possession of a new enterprises, venture or idea and is accountable for the inherent risks and the outcome.
According to him, before the commencement of academic activities at the Kwara State University part of their promise to the University community is to produce graduates that will be able to employ themselves and create employment not graduates that would be seeking for employment.
“ So in looking for a solution to the problem of unemployment, we saw a necessity to start a centre for entrepreneurship, so it is this entrepreneurship that has designed programmes and activities that will empower our graduates as well as other people within the community to be enterprise creator”, Awodun said further.
At KWASU, the centre is responsible for helping the University to achieve the aim of making students self employed. Based on that, the University had actually designed its programmes, for instance the one that concerns the under desire graduates students of KWASU is what the enterprise creation and skill acquisition programme.
The programme starts at 200 level of the students and every semester from 200 level to 400 level. There is also entrepreneurship programme that students must go through. This supposed to take the students through the process of identifying opportunities and being able to create a product out of the opportunities. Establishing enterprises, mentioning in terms of skills acquisition, how to be able to write business plan and raise finance for their business plan and eventually entrepreneurship practice, that is, putting it to practice all that they have been taught in the four stages that is, as students they should be able to identify a business opportunities inform of an idea that would develop into a product. As students, they should be able to start an enterprise, that is, register a business to pursue these opportunities that they have seen, the third stage is for the students to go for what is called entrepreneurship mentorship, that is, to go and acquire skills in an already established enterprise. The fourth stage is for them to know how to write a business plan, to seek for a finance to be able to run the business. At the fifth stage, the students were expected to run that business for a period of atleast 3-6 months, while still on campus. So every student of KWASU, must go through these 5 stages before they can graduate from the University. This programme designed is called enterprise and skill acquition programme that will help the students to be self employed.
Doctor Awodun, while speaking on how to achieve these, said the Kwara State University is collaborating with private enterprises to be able to pursue most of these things. “ we are also collaborating with foreign countries of entrepreneurship of the Universities, for instance, Othorock Centre for entrepreneurship that belong to Harvard University, MIT Centre of entrepreneurship of the popular MIT and also Richard Brandson Centre of entrepreneurship in South Africa. We are trying to collaborate with them as centre for entrepreneurship that we can learn from them and build our concept for centre for entrepreneurship uniquely to meet our own needs in this part of the world”.
Therefore entrepreneurship plays vital roles especially in reducing the rate of unemployment in the society. The introduction of the compulsory course into Nigerian Universities curriculum is to control the rate of unemployment, creates people that create businesses and at the sometime through those businesses create products that meet the needs of the society. Therefore, since entrepreneurship is going to create people that will create businesses, then entrepreneurship indirectly is going to create employment because businesses can operate without human resources which are the human capacity required to be able to run those businesses. The products that are going to be created can not be created without those people as a major factor of production.
Basically entrepreneurship plays crucial roles, it will create people that will create businesses and at the sametime as they create those businesses they will create employment opportunities. Entrepreneurship is a key driver of economic growth and job creation. It provides many people with career opportunities that better fit their preferences than waged employment. In addition, self-employment or business start-up is a response by significant numbers of people to job losses in the current global economic crisis. Therefore, there is need for government at all levels to strengthen the process of entrepreneurship in order for the Nation to develop than this and reduce unemployment.
The universities and vocational training institutions as central actors should work intensively on entrepreneurship skills development in universities, so that the undergraduates’ unemployment would be lessen, while Academic faculties and students need to find innovative ways to appropriate entrepreneurship in their subject discipline and it is crucial to involve entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial organisations.
Moreover, the government should however provide resources for those that engage in entrepreneurship training, especially Wealth and a high majority of jobs are created by small businesses started by entrepreneurially minded individuals, many of whom go on to create big businesses. People exposed to entrepreneurship frequently express that they have more opportunity to exercise creative freedoms, higher self esteem, and an overall greater sense of control over their own lives. As a result, many experienced business people political leaders, economists, and educators believe that fostering a robust entrepreneurial culture will maximize individual and collective economic and social success on a local, national, and global scale.
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