Youth Entrepreneurship in Nigeria: A Roadmap to Self Employment, Obodo Godwin, Ambassador Press
By Nwagu Clifford
This book argues that youth entrepreneurship is the cheapest and most realistic solution to rising poverty and financial insecurity among the youths in Nigeria. It, therefore, commences by introducing the youth reader to the concepts of entrepreneurship, and enterprise, and how to discover business opportunities and the skills required to face the challenges involved. Also, it proffers some agencies and organisations that provide means of helping young entrepreneurs out of some of the major start up challenges. It believes that youths are very vulnerable members of the society, but, if given the required empowerment and training, stand in the better stead to transform the country.
An idle mind, they say, is the devil’s workshop. It seeks to open the mind of the employment seeking Nigerian youths to the tremendous opportunities that exists in such areas as agribusiness, manufacturing, entertainment, service delivery, science and technology, etc., as well as the efforts put in place by the government and private organisations to support the efforts of the youths to engage in any of these self-sustaining businesses.
It is a motivational source material that not only provides and guides the reader through the road to self realisation in entrepreneurship. It goes further to imbue the reader with skills that can turn him into a good innovator, a generator of implementable ideas and a trustworthy ally of the government in creating a prosperous society whose prosperity is championed by the youths.
Youth unemployment constitutes a potential danger to any society because of its proclivity to channeling their energy to undesirable ends like banditry, armed robbery, kidnapping, and prostitution and internet crimes of varying dimensions. Directing the attention of the youths to the pursuit of entrepreneurial goals benefits not only them but the society as a whole, as it makes them successful youth entrepreneurs, employers of labor, innovators, and contributors to the national wealth. Instead of being liabilities, they become national assets.
The book as an introductory source material has largely delivered on its goals by its ability to introduce the reader to the concepts involved in entrepreneurship as well as the essential qualities or characteristics the youth entrepreneur needs so as to progress. It goes further to educate the reader on some of the problems that will confront the intending youth as well the ways of solving them. It is a didactic as well as exciting reading material on entrepreneurship that opens the mind of, and encourages the seemingly confused youth on how to start in taking a risk into the world of private enterprise by laying all the opportunities and challenges bare.
The major achievements of the book are recorded from chapter four to chapter eight. These are where the author makes his major contributions by rigorously identifying some of the essential characteristics of a youth entrepreneur, the enormous challenges that he will confront and the avalanche of institutions, organisations and places where the means of surmounting them abound.
As an expert in vocational education with bias in agriculture, a lecturer in entrepreneurship and experienced manager of resources, the author displays a unique qualification to write on this topic by dexterously presenting and expressing his points within a space of one hundred and three pages spread into ten chapters. Thus, nobody would hide under any guise to shy away from taking, at least, a cursory glance at this book, its enticing topic notwithstanding.
It is interesting to note how the author skillfully tries to do so much within a small space. What will take a larger space to accomplish has been achieved in a few pages with an incredibly simple but easily comprehensible language. Therefore, it has the capability to be accessed by a much wider audience. This is also a major achievement for the book.
The book is also a very important contribution to knowledge, policy making and implementation, and constitutes a milestone in the effort at model building for youth entrepreneurship development, employment creation and development planning in Nigeria. It encapsulates the key challenges as well as solutions in employment and wealth creation in our country. Above all, it has the potentials to transform unemployed youths into potential entrepreneurs, employers of labour, and very important contributors to the national account.
This book is very highly recommended for perusal and use by policy makers and implementers, academics and researchers, as well as all concerned youths, adults, intellectuals, and the enlightened public everywhere, especially Nigeria.