The Place of Entrepreneurship in the Provision of Youth Employment in Oyo State

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

The desire to diversify and grow the Nigerian economy as well as create substantial number of jobs for the teaming youth population has been expressed by successive administrations for the past three decade. Yet unemployment has continued to be a major challenge of the Nigerian state. Indeed, Nigeria has been grappling with high rate of unemployment in the last 30 years. Available records show that the unemployment challenge was most devastating or at its pick in the past few years (Harry, 2021). This was exacerbated by the wake of the country slipping into recession in 2016 and the attendant sack of personnel by organizations in the different sectors of the economy, hence, making desire for gainful employment in both the public and private sectors a mirage for increasing number of youths graduating from various institutions of learning.

Efforts by successive administrations to address the unemployment challenge through the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Graduate Internship scheme, N-Power, etc have yielded little or no remarkable outcomes, hence, the encouragement of entrepreneurship development among youths, especially in the agricultural sector. Essentially, the drive towards youth entrepreneurship is anchored the belief that it will make good number of the youths create jobs for themselves and also employ others. Isiaka et al (2017) conceived of entrepreneurship as the process of giving birth to a new enterprise.

The development and transformation of Nigerian and the Sub -Sahara Africa is highly dependent on youth empowerment through Entrepreneurship. They are the backbone of economic development all over the world and play important role for employment, income and societal changes, particularly in transition economies like Nigeria. The need for entrepreneurship development in the country today is necessitated by the fact that entrepreneurship development is a major factor in economic growth and development and also the permanent cure for extreme hunger and poverty necessitated by unemployment. It is in this respect this paper seeks to highlight the major challenges and prospects of entrepreneurship in the country and thus proposing some plausible strategies that can promote effective entrepreneurship that will help develop the economy.

Entrepreneurship is more than simply starting a business. It is a process through which individuals identify opportunities, allocate resources, and create value. This creation of value is often through the identification of unmet needs or through the identification of opportunities for change. It is the act of being an entrepreneur which is seen as “one who undertakes innovations with finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods hence Entrepreneurs see “problems” as “opportunities,” and then take action to identify the solutions to those problems and the customers who will pay to have those problems solved. Entrepreneurial success is simply a function of the ability of an entrepreneur to see opportunities in the marketplace, initiate change (or take advantage of change) and creates value through solutions.

Entrepreneurship development is learning process designed to instill creative ability to young people so as to be a business creator and not a job seeker. In this way, youths will have progressively more challenging educational activities; experiences that will enable them to develop the insight needed to discover and create entrepreneurial opportunities; and the expertise to successfully start and manage their own businesses to take advantage of available socio-economic opportunities in their environment. This study therefore intends to examine the place entrepreneurship on the provision of youth employment in Oyo State with specific focus on VSESC, The Polytechnic, Ibadan.