Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that the Central Bank of Nigeria’s initiatives in capacity building and access to fund will address the myriads of pitfalls facing young entrepreneurs and aid the expansion of employment opportunities for Nigerians.
Obasanjo, who delivered an address at the first graduation ceremony of the CBN Entrepreneurship Development Centre, South-West, in Ibadan, said young entrepreneurs failed to grow their businesses in Nigeria because of poor management, lack of technical knowledge, poor record keeping, insufficient capital and over-expansion.
He explained that the business environment in the country was bedeviled by infrastructural deficit, competition from imported products, and inadequate access to funding.
The former president said, “Entrepreneurship is a critical aspect of our economic growth. It is the live wire that currently triggers micro and macro-economy for developing and developed nations. It is a major solution to our divestment from the mono-economic culture into having multiple economic strategic achievements of varied streams of national incomes.
“The current international price of crude has negatively affected the livelihood of our citizenry and from all indications, could experience further decline in sales of crude and investment in that sector.
“Entrepreneurs who succeed in growing their businesses into large empires are those that are disciplined in the face of all the challenges they encounter. The challenges of the Nigerian business environment are numerous and limit the number of ideas that grow into real businesses. They also limit the growth of existing businesses into becoming empires”.
He added that “one of the major challenges of small business in Nigeria is that of funding and capacity building.”
Obasanjo said, “The recent intervention by the CBN is the introduction of the MSME Development Fund, but the issue of collateral is still a difficult obstacle to aspiring entrepreneurs.
“The capacity building training offered by the CBN-Entrepreneurship Development Centre should be strengthened and widened as a preparatory platform for these aspiring entrepreneurs to learn how to thrive and get high returns on investment.”
Calling on young Nigerians to take advantage of the limitless opportunities in the country by generating jobs through creative initiative, the former president noted that importation had taken dominant place in Nigeria’s macro-economic scheme because of a wide gap between demand and supply chain.
“The entire agri-business value chain offers the Nigerian limitless opportunities with appropriate training, skill acquisition and resource intervention,” he said.