Don decries absence of policy to drive entrepreneurship development

An Associate Professor and Director, Entrepreneurship and Skills Development Centre, University of Lagos, Dr Sunday Adebisi has decried absence of a policy to drive the development of the entrepreneurship sector.He said the entrepreneurship development policy would serve as a national policy where everyone can draw from and key into in order to develop the real sector.

He expressed worries about the global ranking of Nigeria when compared to other countries that have a policy on entrepreneurship, which drives their development.He argued that the availability of such a policy would allow the practitioners and academia measure what percentage of Nigerian youths that can within the range of age brackets would be able to key into it and also have the opportunity of developing the manpower aimed at developing the real sector.

“Today, what has transformed India, China, Singapore, Hong Kong is entrepreneurship development policy. It is a worry to everybody, the Federal Government needs to sit down and put heads together to create the policy. Where there is entrepreneurship policy, the real sector would be developed, but that is not there

“What will build a nation is the real sector and the composite of the real sector are entrepreneurs. The Federal Government needs to pull stream of experts together to be able to bring up together and develop a solid entrepreneurship development policy for the nation that will drive development at the micro level to take it to the macro level,” he said.

Adebisi, in an interview with The Guardian, also canvassed for a large percentage of training of youths, especially the National Youth Service Corp members to be focused on entrepreneurship development.

He said: “80 per cent of the NYSC is supposed to be based on entrepreneurship development, so that in that one year, they can be grounded in controlling a successful business. Experts will be brought on board to do business plan for them, look at the area of the strength and help them to be successful in building business.”

On the increased rate of unemployment in the country, he blamed the youths for not being helpful to themselves. He tasked the youths to redirect their focus.
According to him, if the nation must be built, the youths must be built too.He added: “When you have an entrepreneurship development policy, it will be outlined in there as a national policy, the youths will understand it as an area where government is building for them; they are likely to look towards that direction.

“The entrepreneurship development policy will fill in the gap because the policy will clearly state it for age group and the support you can have where the opportunities are. If there is entrepreneurship development policy, there will be transfer of technology within the sector that will move the country forward.”