The government and the campaign for entrepreneurial Nigeria

Over the past decades ordinary Nigerians have paid for government incompetency and inability to provide jobs for the teaming population courtesy of the National Youth Service Scheme forged against inexperience displayed by fresh graduates.

The inadequacies of the government has kept the nation in a state of turmoil, especially her youth which makes up for large chunk of the country’s population, and out of they joined the band wagon of mass entrepreneurial skills development. The question is, what is the necessary apparatus instituted by the government to make this a reality.

The only song the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy Ngozi Oknjo-Iweala has for those who care to dance to it, is the YouWiN program and Sure-P, which from all indication is lopsided from the launch till date.

When there is a system failure. Leaders (government) dive towards world trending innovations without asking how suitable it will be for the followers – neglecting important indices like electricity and other key infrastructures.

Entrepreneurship is a beautiful and beneficial scheme, which is laudable and deserves commendation. However, individual preferences cannot be relegated and completely neglected during planning. According to a research by Globalplux Consulting Services on self-employment, not everyone is caught out to “own” their personal businesses – train them all you want, put them through several years of rigorous skills acquisition and gift them a mentor, they will still fail – some individuals can only work under somebody.

Before Jesus Christ, there was John the Baptist! Hence, before clamouring entrepreneurship, there should be an effective and efficient regulation of the market, social, physical, economic and political environment, since startups can hardly thrive under the current situation in the country. Those who plan to go into small or medium scale manufacturing and processing industry can not compete with a certain Dangote and the rest big guns who has flooded the market already and can afford to go down on price, and also have millions of naira stashed away for advert placement, at the end it’s obvious beginners can hardly compete under such circumstance and definitely they can never afford such flexibility if they want to break-even at the set duration.

The solution remains that, the government must perform their responsibility and provide alternatives for her citizens to chose from. Those who prefer ‘white collar job’ should have places to work and those who wants to be self-employed can choose their entrepreneurship proposals and not shoving it down the throats of everyone.