By Seyi Babalola
To guarantee value creation in the country, Nigerians and governments at all levels have been urged to adopt a focus on “entrepreneurship” as a matter of policy and conscious desire. In addition to addressing the problems of deprivation, hunger, unemployment, and emigration this will bring a lot of unofficial enterprises into the formal system.
Professor Sunday Adebisi, the first occupant of the Dr. Mike Adenuga Jr. Professorial Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Lagos and also the director of the school’s Entrepreneurship and Skill Development Center, made the disclosure during his first special lecture on “Revolutionising the Nigerian Economy to Create Jobs and Sustainable Wealth.” Tuesday at University of Lagos is “The Sole Ladder, The Sole Option, The Sole Platform.”
He opined that everything happening in and around Nigeria are daily presenting opportunities, and that its people would help the country generate enormous amounts of money if they were given guidance and well-thought-out regulations.
“Government should identify possible innovations in the areas of their strength and motivate the citizens to pursue enterprise opportunities there. The three tiers of Government must make a deliberate effort to support the democratisation of innovation and entrepreneurship from the next academic session in all levels of education in Nigeria with a good monitoring team at all levels”, Professor Adebisi said.
In her remarks, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Professor Folasade Ogunsola, lauded Dr. Mike Adenuga for his commitment to promoting entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial academic knowledge and skills acquisition through the endowment of the professorial chair.
According to her, the Adenuga Professorial Chair’s Board of Trustee’s determination is pushing the university closer to the fulfillment of a common goal between the donor and the institution by using the chair to jointly explore novel avenues that would not only address the economic challenges the nation faces “but also clear the way for our children to grow up in a sustainable and prosperous future”.
The lecture, according to Professor Taiwo Osipitan, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Dr. Adenuga Professorial Chair, was intended to examine how to incorporate entrepreneurship challenges and generate profitable employment in the nation.
In order to spark entrepreneurship research, pave a new path for entrepreneurship knowledge and practice, and foster the establishment of businesses in the context of our developing democracy, the Mike Adenuga Professorial Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies was established in 2008.
The Mike Adenuga Professorial Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies was instituted in 2008 to kindle Entrepreneurship Research, knowledge and practice, and enterprise creation in our nation’s fledgling democracy.
