By Nduka Uzuakpundu
There is a pressing need as
Nigeria, under the Buhari administration, grapples with the ugly effects of a
rather deep recession and attempts to diversity the country’s economic base, to
link the incubation centres in the country with her tertiary motivations –
including polytechnics and Colleges of Education.
The intent of what is
potentially an effective network and bridge of information on the latest
research findings is to encourage the rise of a new crop of enterpreneurs, who,
armed with such findings would become new drivers or skippers of industries and
employers of labour.
They are expected to be an army
of new and enterprising investors in the Nigerian economy, whose views on
policies – especially financial and monetary policies, as they affect their
access to bank loans, interest rates and repayment terms and conditions, such
that, with friendly economic policies, they would be empowered as active and
quite visible partners with government in sculpting a new, progressive economic
climate, where growth at, say, five percent per annum, is sustained for a
minimum of two decades.
Within that distance, it’s
almost certain that the new crop of entrepreneurs, who are most likely products
or beneficiaries of the spirit of enterprise being preached, somewhat
stubbornly and aggressively, by the skippers of the Institute of Entrepreneurs
(IOE), Ogba-Lagos, would have eaten, appreciably, into the fortunes of
employment, attained the status of regular and reliable tax-source for the
government and regular players in the activities of the Nigerian Inter-Bank
Settlement System (NIBSS), with special reference to curbing financial fraud,
sinking the roots of government policy on a cashless economy and, so, the
emergence of a new banking, business culture and entrepreneurial behaviour.
And yet, the starting point,
said the Executive Secretary of IOE, Dr. Rotimi Oladele, is to expose,
henceforward, members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and third and
final year students in tertiary institutions to the activities and findings of
well over thirty incubation centres in the country, especially their findings
that could be helpful to them in founding a new generation of enterprises:
agriculture and cluster or allied services; catering; information and
communication technology (ICT); leather and foot-wear outfits; estate
development and management – alongside allied enterprises; interior and design
ventures; senior citizens’ care services; beauty and
fashion design ventures; cabinet-making; distributive trade and logistics;
down-streamcluster ventures or enterpreises affiliated to the crude oil
industry; this time with an conscious effort to act in manner that is
appreciably friendly to the environment; security agency; civil aviation and
adjunct services, say.
The liaison between incubation
centres and tertiary institutions had become quite pressing, in that during a
recent outing at the Enugu State University of Technology (ESUT), it was
discovered – much to the surprise of an Oladele-led team – that, almost as an
approximation of much of may well pas for a national index, the skippers of
ESUT knew less of the findings of core, east-based incubation centres. And
their numerous findings could be of use to students taking courses in
entrepreneurship programme in universities or those of them who have graduated.
Such a link and exposure are
sure to arm the students and NYSC operatives with skills and behaviour for
self-employment. It’s also quite likely that for the ambition amongst third and
final year students in tertiary institution, that having such entrepreneurial
skills and information from any of the incubations centres, they could start
running their own enterprises, well before they graduated and leave for the
NYSC orientation camp in readiness for national service.
The narrative of such budding
entrepreneurs, who have come to realise that there are no more white-collar
jobs, could be more readable than that of a third-year student, who some years
back, in a university in Lagos, bought a Passat car from a mini-enterprise of
designing and printing Valentine Day cards, greeting and ecclesiastical cards,
and taking them to as far as Okigwe, deep inside the east of the country, for
sale each time there were church programmes.
It’s quite obvious that the
Nigerian economy of today is more forward-looking, than it was in the ’90s, and
because of the imperatives of diversification, there’s now what Oladele
referred as a culture aimed at “changing the mind-set of our youths to build
sustainable oasis of entrepreneurial growth and development”, in a manner that
aided the astronomical growth, in the late ’80s of the Asian Tigers – South
Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, etc.
Oladele figured that in
sculpting new entrepreneurs from NYSC operatives, the Federal Ministry of
Education, National University Commission (NUC) and the Federal Ministry of
Science and Technology should direct incubation centres – the likes of Federal
Institute for Industrial Research, Oshodi (FIIRO), Lagos, Nigerian Stored
Products Research Institute (NSPRI), Lagos, Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria
(CRIN), Ibadan, Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria (FRIN), Ibadan, Nigerian
Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR), Benin, Project Development Agency
(PRODA), Enugu, National Cereals Research Institute, Badeggi, Niger State,
National Crops Research Institute (NCRI), Bida, Niger State, National Animal
Production Research Institute (NAPRI), Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna
State, National Centre for Agricultural Mechanization (NCAM), Idofia, Kwara
State, National Institute for Fresh water Fisheries Research (NIFFR), New
Bussa, Niger State, etc. – to make their findings known to tertiary
institutions.
The experience, so far is that
less than 45 percent of the activities and findings of the incubations centres
– nationwide – are available to the institutions where entrepreneurial
programmes or courses, skills and behaviour are being taught.
What that translates to is that
research and incubations centres need to be carry out some aggressiveness
marketing and advertisement of their entrepreneurship-related activities and
products to big industries, small- and medium- scale enterprises, budding
entrepreneurs in NYSC camps.
It’s an entrepreneurial
exercise from which the incubation centres could broaden their clientele base
and establish what promises to be a sustainable and thriving incubation
centre-industry- entrepreneur-consumer relationship; a much-desired chain of
goods-and-services-delivery culture as a top player in ongoing effort to
diversity of the Nigerian economic base.
Out of such anti-recession and
pro-diversification entrepreneurs, a Lagos-based business and entrepreneurship
consultant, Mr. Kayode Akinyoola, figured, ought to emerge individuals who
would be good citizens known for paying tax regularly.
He said at an IOE-sponsored conference on
“Standardizing and Incorporating Financial Solution to SMEs
and Start-up Challenges as key elements”, held in Lagos, that there was a need
for budding entrepreneurs and long-established ones to understand the dynamics
of risks that are inherent in their endeavours – the possibility, say, of a
snap in the line of raw material supply and the user, who’s a manufacturer, the
fall in consumers demand of their goods or services or unexpected hostile
effect of government’s monetary or financial policy, that may raise –
ambitiously – the cost of borrowing money from fiduciary institutions – and how
such risks could be mitigated. An entrepreneur who could foresee these and many
more – and, so, design his/her entire busines praxis and behaviour – could be
in the bracket of whom Oladele called “an individual who is managing
vision.”
While for any enterprises, keeping
updated business records for productivity, profitability and operational
efficiency is almost a given, Akinyoola – alongside, an ICT specialist and
financial consultant with NIBSS, are Kayode Kalejaiye – nodded that if the
experience and attendant lessons of today’s deep recession was any guide, the
Federal Government, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), primary mortgage
institutions (PMIs) and older banks and the Federal Ministry of Finance should,
in taking and pressing recovery-from- recession policies, lure old,
and budding entrepreneurs – like NYSC operatives, with loan
facilities that would egg them on and, so, be, genuinely, self-employed.
Truth is that it takes some
form of calculatedly ambitious spending – if the lessons of classical economics
and recent American experience are any guide – to defang recession.
But, where all that is not
quite appealing; where prospective entrepreneurs are discouraged from borrowing
from banks, because of astronomical interest rates, the head of the Department
of Administration and Human Resources at the IOE, Dr. ’Folu
Olagunju, offered that, in principle, they should tap into the rich
treasures of crowd finding.
The snag, presently, though, is
that the apex bank has banned its use – for what it said were reasons of the
legal challenges against its alleged abuse in the past.
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