Employment Generation through Entrepreneurial Development: The Nigerian Experience

Abstract

Unemployment has of recent become a global problem with developing nations of the world having the lion shares of the phenomenon. This has resulted in the migration of people from one region of the world to another in search of greener pastures. In the past three decades, Europe has seen people migrating from its Eastern to the Western part while Africa has lost so many of her bright scholars and potential citizens through migration to Europe even through unorthodox means such as through the Mediterranean Sea and savannah deserts in search of greener pastures. This paper investigated the past Nigerian government’s interventional efforts and attempts at addressing the hydra headed problems of unemployment in the country and their effectiveness at encouraging the sense entrepreneurship in the country with a view to facilitating job creation for the teaming Nigerians job seekers. The study relied on secondary data by way of existing literatures for this study while the results of the findings are presented with the aid of frequency tables. The finding from the study revealed that several intervention programmes introduced by successive governments in the country had failed to produce the expected results. Findings further indicated a plethora of bottlenecks which are principally hinged on corruptions, bureaucratic bottleneck vis-a-vis inconsistencies in government policies, political instability and lack of entrepreneurial skill by majority of unemployed Nigerians. The study recommended combined hard work on the part of the government to the development of entrepreneurship by providing an enabling environment and infrastructures coupled with the introduction of relevant entrepreneurial educational programmes in all institutions of learning be tailored towards development of entrepreneurial skills while start up loans should be made available without interests.