Students urged to embrace entrepreneurship growth by the FCT education board
The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Secondary Education Board, on Tuesday in Abuja urged students to embrace entrepreneurship development.
Mrs Nanre Emeje, Secretary, FCT Secondary Education Board, said this while declaring open a three-day capacity building training for teachers under MIND SHIFT Entrepreneurship programme, National-School Entrepreneurship Programme (N-SEP).
Reports state that the event being attended by more than100 participants was organised by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN).
Emeje said that the call became necessary in view of the country’s quest to bring education revolution in favour of industrialisation.
While calling for schools’ curriculum that would depict what students should assimilate about entrepreneurship, Emeje described entrepreneurship as a gateway to the economy of every nation.
“The schools’ curriculum must be designed to depict what exactly we need the students to assimilate about entrepreneurship.
“The expected curriculum must denote who an entrepreneur is and the difference between an entrepreneur and an ordinary producer.
“Others are what the society stands to gain from having entrepreneurial oriented citizens and why entrepreneurship is an essential ingredient of education,’’ she said.
She, however, stressed the need for the instruments through which knowledge on entrepreneurial skills were being passed on to students to be conspicuously brought to the mental and physical level where they could interpret relevant topics.
“The instruments for the transmission of entrepreneurial skills to the students are teachers.
“So, it is apt that the teachers are groomed to see the need for entrepreneurship education in the students and develop a passion for transmitting it to the scholars,’’ Emeje said.
She appealed to SMEDAN to intervene by producing adequate instructional materials and textbooks for the teaching of entrepreneurship education in schools.
“Teachers themselves can be handy in bridging this yawning gap; they obviously require motivation and coordination to do this. I therefore, use this opportunity to call on SMEDAN to look toward this direction,’’ Emeje said.
Earlier, the Director-General of SMEDAN, Mr. Olawale Fasanya, reiterated the agency’s commitment to promote student entrepreneurship education.
Represented by Dr Friday Okpara, the director, Partnership and Coordination, SMEDAN, Fasanya expressed worry that there was anxiety among Nigerian students about their future because of dearth of opportunity in the employment market.
He said that lack of entrepreneurial skills to go into new business ventures contributed to the much anxiety and uncertainty among the students.
“The World Bank recently predicted that there will be additional injection of 40 million people joining the economically active group by 2040 in Sub-saharan Africa.
“Given the most promising economic performance within the region, there is no way regular employment will cope with this number of people entering the unemployment market.
“The imperative is that young people must be supported with education and training that promotes employment generation and wealth creation,’’ Fasanya said.
Mr. Saidu Abubakar, the Principal, Government Secondary School, Area 10, Garki, Abuja, urged the participants to take advantage of the programme to prepare and equip themselves as entrepreneurs as well as entrepreneurship educators.
The participants were taken through topics including `Vision and Goal Setting, Types of Business Ownership, Sales and Marketing Your Business and Your Business and Your Community’ among others.
