Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Empowerment Development Program

Dr. Muhammad Yusuf

Economics Department, Faculty of Social and Management Science

Umaru Musa Ya’radua, University, Katsina State

Email: yusudume@yahoo.com

A paper to be presented at the Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Empowerment program

Workshop, Organized by the National Association of Unemployed Graduates, Katsina State
Chapter, Tuesday 22nd September, 2015

Abstracts

This paper examines problems of skills acquisition and entrepreneurship empowerment program
in Nigeria. The paper analyzed the theoretical underpinning unemployment, skills acquisitions
and entrepreneur empowerment program. The paper discovered that contrary to the theoretical
arguments unemployment heavily rely on skill acquisition which requires tacit knowledge. The
paper suggests that unemployment reduction in Nigeria requires improvements in
entrepreneurship empowerment program through various government interventions.

Keywords: Unemployment, Economic growth, Labour productivity

1. Introduction
The problem of unemployment in Nigeria can be traced to imbalances between labour
market requirements and lack of pre-requisite skills by young people Andowu (2011); and poor
entrepreneurship (Fatunla, 2012). As observed by Oba (2012) lack of marketable skills from
unemployed persons has been identified as the greatest obstacle to employment generation and
poverty reduction in Nigeria. Similarly, Adegbite, (2013) noted that technical entrepreneurial
talent that involves the establishment and management of manufacturing industries for
productive activities in the real sector of the economy is lacking in Nigeria. However, a World
Bank study by Nils – Henrik and Morch (1995) has proposed a contrary view that technical
entrepreneurial talent is indeed available but that the economic environment has been such that it
does not allow this talent to develop. This proposition concurs with a third view by Adjebeng –

1
Asem (1989) as cited in Adegbite et al (2006) that African entrepreneur is alive and well, but
that he/she rather than undertaking manufacturing business (technical entrepreneurship) has been
diverted to non-productive, and rent–seeking activities which researchers have referred to as
commercial entrepreneurship. Whichever opinion is considered from the above mentioned, the
fact that remains is that, there is a critical factor gaps in Nigeria’s Entrepreneurship Development
Process. This obvious critical skill gaps inhibits the development of youth in the country and
clearly indicates a missing gap, which needs to be filled. Although Nigeria has many problems to
contend with, but that of the education sector is a major one. The quest for higher education in
Nigeria, even though has increased almost exponentially in the last quarter of the last century,
however, this has brought about large scale of graduate unemployment. Because of the obvious
structural and dynamic relationship between higher education and a country’s level of
development, we can safely conclude that a society’s system of education has a direct and critical
bearing on the types of job that can potentially be available for graduate employment. However,
the objective realities of the Nigerian university system do suggest that the country may not be
able to provide employment for all her graduates, as the continuous decline in the performance of
our universities is quite obvious. It runs through absence of critical teaching/research personnel,
lack of facilities, lack of textbook, poorly equipped libraries and laboratories. In this very
depressing situation, therefore, the process of teaching, research publication and knowledge
development may have no relevance to the challenges of the present global market.
Again, the educational system is theoretically oriented, for this reason, the system of
education does not equip school leavers with those practical skills required for earning a living.
Many of them see education as a means of freeing themselves form working on the land. Many
remain unemployed since they are not suited to the available job opportunities. Many people do
not attend school for further study beyond the first degree level. This could be as a result of
widespread poverty and the low value placed on education by some people. There are therefore,
a high percentage of young people who are unemployed because there are not enough
available job opportunities and they don’t possess the required skills. The main objectives of this
paper are to analyze both theoretical as well as empirical evidences on the problems of skills
acquisition and entrepreneurship development in Nigeria.

2
 The remaining part of this paper is organized as follows. Section two focuses on the literature
on entrepreneurship development program, while section three presents’ problems affecting
skills acquisition in Nigeria, section four presents the conclusion and policy implications.
2. Entrepreneurship Development Program
Youth entrepreneurship is an important level for developing the human capital that allows
young people to avoid unemployment and possibly have a more fulfilling life (Awogbenle and
Iwuamadi, 2010). The human capital formed in Youth is an important determinant of long-term
growth that a nation can invest on. The promotion of youth entrepreneurship is seen as an
important means of creating employment and ensuring that nations are able to benefit from the
socio-economic potentials of their young people. Youth Entrepreneurship programme is
increasingly seen as an important means of improving the capacity of young people and putting
them onto the path of economic independence, thereby tackling the global unemployment
challenge As observed by ILO (2006) an important argument for investment in youth
entrepreneurship is to turn “necessity” entrepreneurship into “opportunity” entrepreneurship by
instilling an entrepreneurial culture in young men and women, such that young people become
entrepreneurs by choice rather than by chance or necessity.

Programmes (EDPs) have been described by Gouws (2002) as a purposeful intervention by

an adult (the teacher) in the life of a learner to impart entrepreneurial qualities and skills to
enable the learner to survive in the world of business. Its aim is to equip learners with skills,
knowledge and disposition that can help them develop or implement innovative social or
business plans. Accordingly Suleiman (2010) defines EDP as the process of enhancing
entrepreneurial skills and knowledge through structured training and institutional building
programmes. Entrepreneurship Development Programme in the context of this study refers to the
process of enhancing the capacity of recipients through structured training and institutional
building programme. Two approaches have been used for entrepreneurship development in
Nigeria. One of the approaches is concerned with provision of generous credit facilities for
small-scale industrialists. The scheme, which was formally launched at the beginning of the third
National plan period (1975-1980), aimed at providing entrepreneurs with seed capital. The
second approach is concerned with provision of training. This led to the establishment of the first
training centre, known as Industrial Development Centre (IDC) in Owerri, in 1972. Other IDCs

3
were established in different parts of the country. These two elements (training and funding) are
the twin components of Nigerian EDP initiative.

Structural training as described by Abiodun (1999) is a systematic development of

knowledge, skills and attributes required by an individual to perform adequately on a given task
or job. Aina (1992) defined structural training as an activity where an expert and learner work
together to effectively transfer knowledge and skills from the expert to the learner (to enhance
learner’s knowledge, skills and attributes) so that the learner can better perform a current or
specific task of job. On the other hand, institutional or capacity building is a course of action
designed to enable an individual to realize his potentials for growth (Atiomo, 2008). Capacity
building relates to the future activity rather than present or current jobs. This suggests a broader
view of knowledge and skills acquisition than training. It is concerned more with individual’s
potentials than with immediate skills.

3. Problems affecting skills acquisitions in Nigeria

Nigeria despite being labour surplus economy, when it comes to entrepreneurship

empowerment even in relatively low technology sectors, Nigeria seems to suffer from
persistence labour shortages. Some of the constraints are due to shortages of specific skills, but
there is also a shortage of ‘unskilled’ labour. The genesis for the latter is that while labour exists
in large quantity and can easily be found but the difficulties is in the area of finding within the
factory workers those with well skilled manpower of handling international competitiveness in
his skill and unfortunate these are some of the area where skills is needed most but what you find
out is that workers exposed to factory discipline and conditions of work in a high pressure export
sector are very hard to find they only operate in suboptimal below capacity utilization sectors.
Despite a bunches of graduates you still find that even though the formal school education are
socially important but is far from being sufficient to addressed the wide technological gap
existing in the industries. At the same time, private sector training institutes for skilled workers
have been set up in more rich developing countries with larger manufacturing sectors. But here
too two problems emerged one poor uptake, and two an unwillingness of the part of employers
of labour to indulges huge amount of budgetary expenditure on training their workforce. These
are clear typical examples of market failures.

4
 The empirical evidence that is available from relatively successful developing countries
suggests that the opportunities and compulsions for learning can be created by very different
types of institutions and policies. Opportunities were created using many different mechanisms
including tariff protection (in virtually every case but to varying extents), direct subsidies (in
particular in South Korea), subsidized and prioritized infrastructure for priority sectors (in China
and Malaysia), and subsidizing the licensing of advanced foreign technologies (in Taiwan). With
the advent of a new consensus on international trade through the WTO, tariff protection is no
longer an option for most developing countries, but historical experience tells us that this is not
the only way, or even the most effective way in which to organize support for the learning
processes through which productivity is raised in catch-up sectors. The common feature of
successful learning strategies was the ability to create compulsions for successful learning
because states had the institutional and political capacity to ensure that non-performance was not
tolerated for too long (Amsden 1989; Khan 2000a).
However, for a training program, not end up without success it would demand to be
carefully designed and managed. Training could range from very simple to fairly standard and
sophisticated. Government could facilitate the solution of the market failures in a different ways
comprising co-financing training scheme set up by industry associations, providing low or zero
interest loans to workers attending accredited training programmes and so on. In each case the
development of the scheme would have to reflect the industry needs as well as the capabilities of
available public officials to monitor and implement the programme.

Critical rule implementation will aid the establishing of new entrepreneurial skills and
their acquisitions and implementation as well as the establishment of knowledge and capabilities
to use new technologies are important for Nigeria here. It is a very big assumption to assume that
the risk-sharing strategies for these risky investments are likely to appear through private
contracting in a condition where contract enforcement is weak because of structural problems.
With public agencies absorbing some of these risks, some mistakes will unavoidably be made,
some rent seeking will exist and some entrepreneurs will fail for no fault of their own. But
clearly these costs can be managed significantly by reducing the program to manageable size for
Nigeria and creating well funded and placing capable individuals in key agencies assigned with
the responsibility of delivering results. The examples of successful countries indicate that in the
initial stage their success was typically based on islands of strong and reliable agencies operating

5
in unpromising environments. These islands are likely to be even smaller and more modest in
Nigeria with less promising initial conditions. But it is still important to plan correctly and
develop these strategies.

4. Conclusion and Policy Recommendations

This paper discuss the structural problems skills Acquisition and entrepreneurship
empowerment in Nigeria, using historical as well as analytical inferences to explain how low
productivity is associated to low entrepreneurship development in Nigeria. The paper also
provides policy suggestion on how to address the problems of skills acquisition. These require
carefully designed and a managed strategy which involves two steps solutions, in the first stage
the government could facilitate the solution in different ways comprising co-financing training
scheme set up by industry associations, providing low or zero interest loans to workers attending
accredited training programs and so on. In each case, the development of the scheme would have
to reflect the industry needs, as well as the capabilities of available public officials to monitor
and implement the program. Overcoming the problems of skill acquisition is not just a question
of setting up enterprises and letting them run, but also of setting up institutional compulsions
that ensure that the effort involved in learning is forthcoming (Khan 2005a). This explains why
previous governments’ entrepreneurship development strategies failed in Nigeria.

References

Adegbite, S.A.; Ilori, M.O; Irefin, I.A., Abereijo, I.O. and Aderemi, H.O.S (2006):
“Evaluation of the impact of Entrepreneurial Characteristics on the Performance of Small Scale
Manufacturing Industries in Nigeria. Journal of Asia Entrepreneurship and Sustainability, Vol.3
(1) pp 1-15.

Andow, H. A. (2011): “Impact of Entrepreneurial Skills Development Programmes on

Women Entrepreneurs in Kaduna State.” Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Department of
Economics and Management Sciences, Kaduna: Nigerian Defense Academy.

Diejohan, U. and Oriniolade, W. (1991) Unemployment in Nigeria: Economic Analysis of

Scope, trend and policy issues. Nigeria Journal of Economic and Social Science, Vol. 13 (2) pp
127 – 132.

6
Fatunla, G.T. (1989): Entrepreneurship Development Programmes in Nigeria. International
Small Business Journal Vol. 7(3) pp 47 – 58.

Sagagi, M.S. (2010): “Enterprise Development through value chain Analysis: A case of Kano
State, Nigeria”. Readings in African Entrepreneurship, BUK – ESSEX, Kano: Adamu Joji
Publishers. PP 48 – 50.
Youth and Economic Development in Africa (2006): An issue paper 5th African Development
Forum – Youths and Leadership in the 21st Century, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.