Embrace Entrepreneurship for Govt Support, Nigerians Urged

Oluwafunke Lasisi

Nigerians have been urged to embrace entrepreneurship to support the government with the current challenges taking place across the country, causing difficulty in daily activities and backwardness to the nation.

The call was made by Innate Communications, which is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) for social welfare at a development roundtable to educate and enlighten the society on how they can survive the challenges of corruption, insecurity, unemployment, and fall in education standards, high cost of living, and fall in oil price, among others.

Speaking at the Roundtable with a theme ‘Survival Strategies in the Face of Current Socio-economic Realities: Prospect and Opportunities’, the Lagos State Director, National Orientation Agency (NOA) represented by his Deputy, Ralph Bowoto said the country can only overcome challenges if Nigerians are willing to support the government despite any difficulty situation they are facing.

He explained that to overcome the challenges, Nigerians should be hard-working, creative, embrace subsistence farming, model living, prioritise their needs, complement intervention of the government by acquiring skills, saving, Small Medium Enterprises (SME) and others.

Bowoto stressed that President Muhammadu Buhari has promoted transparency and accountability in the area of corruption and other aspects since he has been elected, saying he is making all efforts to ensure things are back to normal in the country; whereby the problem will be fully addressed.

He said the President’s travels are part of the government duties and is a key to industrialisation method and other relationships that could promote the welfare of the country and bring about change.

There, CEO, OSC College of Fashion, Mrs. Sola Babatunde who spoke on the topic ‘Perspectives on vocational skills as survival strategies’ corroborated Bowoto’s comments that it is not only being hardworking but to add smart to hardworking and request for God’s intervention.

She advised people to embrace skills acquisition with whatever they are doing, and also urged the government to employ expert staff members at various vocational schools provided by them so as to be well managed, rendering it useful to the society as many centres are not functioning.
While emphasising the need to promote and support the people in the society, Babatunde also disclosed that there is free training in tailoring for 50 students who cannot afford her fees, which will also mark the college’s seventh year in business.

The coordinator and head of the NGO, formerly of Daily Independent, Mrs. Funmi Falobi said in midst of the economic challenges, there is need to find survival strategies to reduce the burden which becomes necessary and critical for the Nigerians to optimally utilise the various opportunities, and human and material resources available.

She stressed it was high time to look inward as citizens and think of what to do to be financially empowered and no longer depend on government for everything whereby the need to maximise opportunities around entrepreneurship in order to reduce economic constraint and poverty, calling on the government to ensure conducive environment and review policies that hinder entrepreneurship and industrialisation.

Other speakers included Mr. Crude Achike, a social commentator who spoke on ‘Perspectives on way out and survival strategies for citizens’ and Pastor Steve Akoni, FCIA Leadership coach/trainer, who spoke on ‘Perspectives on insights and strategy for personal survival’.

Akoni also emphasised the need for every citizen to be prayerful, focused and well managed, to see any problem as an opportunity to succeed and recharge the mental resource, because hopelessness is a liability.