Moses Uwagbale
The Institute of Strategic Entrepreneurs of Nigeria (ISEN) has urged government to take steps that would encourage the youth to take more interest in entrepreneurship to combat the nation’s unemployment indices.
Dr Albert Ndeze, Director, Training and Membership, ISEN, gave the advice at the institute’s induction lecture and fellowship award on Saturday in Lagos.
The ceremony was themed: “Empowering and Motivating the Youth to be Self Employed, Self Reliant through Entrepreneurship Development Skills”.
Ndeze urged government to address bottlenecks such as access to research and empowerment funding to attract more youth interest in the area.
He said that addressing these challenges would engender an astronomical increase of 100 million Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) by 2031.
The director called for a more favourable entreprenuerial environment, pushing for additional vocational training to empower first degree holders.
He said this was to engender self sufficency and less dependency on unavailable white collar jobs.
Ndeze said the institute was ready to partner with government on youth empowerment programmes to gainfully engage the youth against the societal vices some were currently engaged in.
“Government must create a favourable environment for both entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial institutes to thrive.
“Once this is in place, it would ensure more job creation and more occupied youths as a ripple effect.
“Government must develop the nation’s human capital to avoid human capital flight by identifying and training those with skills to acquire practical knowledge necessary to attain self-employment and self-reliance,” he said.
In his keynote address, Rev Anayochi Ekeh, a tax and management consultant, described entrepreneurship as the paradigm shift the nation needed to move from a developing to a developed state.
Ekeh, however, hinged the nation’s entrepreneurship survival on the practical efforts of government to provide ease of access to loans and grants, improved infrastructure, and more friendly business regulatory activities.
He charged entrepreneurs on the use of intuitive abilities, and activities that would develop and improve their skills, particularly in production and manufacturing, for greater national advantage in the global business community.
“In comparison with China, India and other developed countries of the world, what they have done differently is the use of their intuitive abilities to think through the futuristic needs of the world and create it.
“This goes to show that entrepreneurship is the paradigm shift that the nation needs to grow.
“However, to prevail and succeed as an entrepreneur, government needs to address the bottlenecks that have stiffled the growth of entrepreneurs so that more jobs can be created, more youth engaged and the society is better for it,” he said.
