The debate on what
government’s ideal position on entrepreneurship should be has elicited
divergent economic postulations from idealists of different eras. On the one
hand, Karl Marx leads the team, comprised of socialists, leninists, among
others, which opines that government should superintend the factors of
production and give room for no private ownership. On the other hand, the West
has, through diplomacy and international advocacy, evangelised the advantages
of capitalism. On a broad scale, the world is split along these two divides,
and Africa, for the most part, finds itself in the latter category.
As it stands in Nigeria
today, entrepreneurship is a concept that successive governments have paid lip
service to.
By way of backdrop, I
should say that entrepreneurship is alien to the vast majority of Nigerians.
This perhaps serves as the raison d’être for our misguided perception on who
should create jobs. Needless to say that paradoxically, we find most schooled
Nigerians guilty of this. The idea we are ingrained with gives the illusion
that education is all about questing for white collar jobs. At worst, the
government is ever there to employ people. But when many seek jobs and are not
able to get any, they resort to the civil service. This has brought about an
imbalance in the employment scale, with government being the highest employer
of labour in Nigeria, a situation that has been very deleterious to the
economy. Any growth-driven economy is such that pays premium on private
ownership of the factors of production. This employment imbalance has, over the
years, brought about an exponential increase in our recurrent expenditure
because government pays salaries to its ever increasing civil servants. In the
wake of the oil crisis that began last year, bringing about a continual fall in
the prices of crude oil, many civil service states inevitably began to owe
their workers for months.
Entrepreneurs make the
world go round. They form the nucleus of any economy for obvious reasons.
Entrepreneurs are always
innovative. The quest for profit drives them in discovering the right people
with the right ideas. They go fishing – something the government cannot do. In
most civil service organisations today, workers are usually indolent, and most
times, unqualified. Yet, they receive salaries at the end of every month. Their
attitudes towards their jobs can be so counter-productive. Bad as that is, the
assumption is that entrepreneurs would never allow such attitudes like
dereliction of duties, lack of qualification, among others, which are prevalent
in the civil service.
The government has
hindered the growth of entrepreneurs in Nigeria over the decades. One of such
ways is the lack of requisite infrastructure needed to grow the economy. Till
date, Nigeria generates an infinitesimal amount of megawatts needed to
electrify every state. Power failure and erratic power supply have, over the
years, been albatrosses bedevilling the power sector. Most Nigerians have long
since resorted to using generators as an alternative which really is pricey to
maintain and dangerous to health. Government can only address this problem by
utilising the many alternative sources of power apart from hydro. Doing this
will not only stabilise power, but also will create jobs for private investors.
Needless to say that infrastructure such as roads, water, etc should equally be
accorded the same sense of urgency as they are requisite to the growth of
businesses.
Vocational institutes
and technical colleges across Nigeria are in deplorable conditions. This is
because government has only been sympathetic to formal education. But formal
education has limited prospects compared to non-formal education. In fact,
given the harsh realities of the Nigerian economy, savoir-faire demands
government treats non-formal educational institutes with equal respects, if not
more. These institutes are the ones that empower people with practical skills
needed to start businesses. The Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of this world used
their computer skills to change the world. Microsoft corporation has over
80,000 employees. It cannot be controverted that the curricula of our formal
institutions are tailored, for the most part, towards pedagogy. That explains
why Nigeria still imports labour to meet its developmental needs. I, therefore,
submit that Nigeria introspects and fastidiously carve out a curriculum
designed towards the development of man and resources. China, despite its large
population, has through entrepreneurial policies empowered its citizens. I
believe strongly that if our technical schools and vocational institutes and
even formal institutions are spruced up with the right gadgets and revised
curriculum, entrepreneurship will experience a watershed of growth in Nigeria.
Capital, as a factor of
production, is not easy to access in Nigeria, especially by the poor. Financial
institutions make it difficult to obtain loans. Government can correct this by
setting up low-interest funds for innovative citizens.
On the part of the
citizenry, erroneous expectations from the government are made on a quotidian
basis. Inevitably, government earns the ire of the people. But the government
can absolve itself from the unrealistic expectations of the people by simply
creating the atmosphere for entrepreneurship to thrive.
I’m well aware that
Nigeria isn’t void of theories on how to salvage its many problems. I remember
in primary school, I could tell the problems of agriculture in Nigeria and also
could proffer solutions to them. As I write this piece, those problems and solutions,
I believe, are still being taught in schools because nothing has changed over
the years.
SOURCE: NIGERIAN TRIBUNE.