STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF ENTREPRENEURIAL EDUCATION FOR YOUTH EMPOWERMENT IN NIGERIA



A PAPER PRESENTED AT THE 2012 ANNUAL NATIONAL CONFERENCE, AT ENUGU STATE UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (ESUT) ENUGU STATE

FROM

EBONYI STATE COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, IKWO
Abstract
Education as an effective and veritable instrument can be used to bring about redress. It is as well one of the greatest investments that a nation can make and use for quick development of its economic, political, sociological and youth empowerment.
One of the major reasons for the clamour of entrepreneurial education in Nigerian schools today is to re-position our education system in order to make innovation effective in the market and else-where for youth empowerment. Entrepreneurial education studies cannot guarantee youth empowerment in the near future if effective strategies for teaching it are not observed and followed. This paper discusses entrepreneurial education system in Nigeria and suggests effective ways which are here to be followed if it must contribute to social reengineering and youth empowerment in Nigeria. 

Introduction
            The Entrepreneur is a crucial facilitator in the process of economic development. It is a term broadly used to denote the innovative, modern, industrial business leader. Entrepreneurial itself is an innovation and creativity at the highest level and brings into existence the hitherto unknown. It further brings about conception of ideas, data collection, policy formulation, career formation, financing, training and development among others. It embodies risk-taking on commercial ventures with a view to making profit in return for investment (Okeke: 2009).
Entrepreneurial studies empowers youths with more functional skills and potentials which prepare them to search for change respond to it, and exploit it as an opportunity. Such empowered youths should be encouraged to establish small-scale businesses for self-reliance. They should take advantage of their developed talents to be originators of profitable business ideas known as innovation, which Schumpter (1800) in Ballis and Smith (1984:75) in Okeke (2009). Identified as the single function that constitute entrepreneurial. The youths should place more emphasis on the ability to gain command of and combine resources in a new way that would be profitable. Entrepreneurial education for youth empowerment is therefore a life-long process that lead to an informed and involved citizens having the creative problem solving skills, scientific and social literacy, and commitment to engage in responsible individual and co-operative actions (Nnabuo, 2009). This type of education enables people to develop the knowledge, values and skills to participate in decision about the ways things are done individually and collectively, locally and globally which will improve the quality of life now without damaging the planet of the future (Nwankwo, 2009) Entrepreneurial education programme, if religiously implemented can guarantee youth empowerment in Nigeria. This paper therefore focuses on the purposes of entrepreneurial education and its relation to youth empowerment in Nigeria, Entrepreneurial education programme implementation strategies for social reengineering and youth empowerment are also discussed.

Purpose of Entrepreneurial Education                 
            The National policy on Education (NPE, 2004), stated the goals for tertiary education among other things is to “acquire both physical and intellectual skills which will enable individuals to be self reliant and useful members of the society, promote and encourage scholarship. To achieve these aims and to contribute to national development according to Okebukola (2001), the universities are required to diversify their programmes for the development of high level manpower within the context of the needs of the economy. Entrepreneurial education in Nigeria as in other parts of the world is to empower the citizen to rise above the boring jobs of the past, create more jobs of interest for themselves and for productive employment. UNESCO (2002:9) saw the purpose of entrepreneurial education to include:
Educating individuals for, and about business, providing a planned continuous learning experience meant to equip individuals to fill up effectively three roles: Making available and distributing goods and services as workers. Making use of the products themselves as consumers and Embarking on wise socio-economic decision as citizens. Disseminating career information to students that relate to their interests, needs and abilities to occupational opportunities in business, creating educational opportunities for students preparing for careers in field other than business, thereby acquiring business knowledge and skills needed to function effectively for instance, being able to handle effectively both oral and written communications, and to develop interpersonal and human relation skills.

The objectives and intents of entrepreneurial education as noted above are not unachievable but laudable. But for them to be achieved, its implementation programme must be effective. There are many ways of implementing the entrepreneurial education programme for youth empowerment.

Entrepreneurial Education and Youth Empowerment
The practical importance of entrepreneurial education to youth empowerment rests in the attainment of a self-reliant nation. For instance, one of the goals in the national goals of education in Nigeria is the building of “a united, strong and self-reliant nation” (Federal Republic of Nigeria, FRN, 2004:6). The concept of self-reliance anchors on individual and collective feelings even on the urge for self-preservation through the independent use of available human and material resources to meet up with individual and groups needs. Entrepreneurial education should not only create self reliance in its beneficiaries but should equip them with the necessary tool to be up and doing as to make the youths become useful members of the society. Entrepreneurial education is looked upon to provide certain traits on the beneficiaries which will enable them perform certain tasks on their own without interferences. Such traits will give the recipient of entrepreneurial education some level of confidence and independence. The issue now is “what is entrepreneurial education.
Entrepreneurial Education
The nation’s economy is bleak; unemployment is everywhere and everyday thousands of graduates are being turned into the labour market. Nwankwo (2009). The above challenges have culminated in the renewed interest of the government in self-reliance. The high rate of unemployment among products of the education system has been attributed to their lack of skills and competence required in the field of work. The National policy on Education (NPE 1970) stated the goals for tertiary education among other things is to “acquire both physical and intellectual skills which will enable individuals to be self-reliant and useful members of the society, promote and encourage scholarship. To achieve these aims and to contribute to national development according to Okebukola (2001) the universities are required to diversify their programmes for the development of high level manpower within the context of the needs of the economy. Entrepreneurial activity is one of the major areas of vocational education. This area from the look of things have not received adequate attention and publicity Anioke (2005), The area is often confused with trade as, a branch of commerce entrepreneurial activities differ from trade because it is all encompassing more than trading activities. Entrepreneurial activities involve self-centred activities. It has to do with owners of small business firms, who have chosen to assume risk, identify business opportunities, assemble resources, initiate actions, and establish organization to satisfy market demands. This activities involve coordinating other factors of production and its accompanying risk or uncertainty, Entrepreneurial activity engenders a feeling of personal responsibility and accountability for results. How well managers have performed the entrepreneurial task of directing, setting and mapping out strategic, development plans can be appraised from the angle of whether.
These conceptualization can be summed up thus:
v    Identification of important opportunities.
v    Decision making as to the opportunities to explore, promote and establish the business enterprises.     
v    Aggregation of the scarce resources required to production and distribution.
v    Organization and management of human and material resources for the attainment of the objectives of the entrepreneur.
v    Risk bearing
v    Importation
With the above you can see why entrepreneurs behave differently from others. Entrepreneurship is not only for skill acquisition sake, but for creating employment for self and others. The word can further mean persons who undertakes/leads military expedition. In another development the word entrepreneur has its root and origin in France and literally is translated to mean “between – takers” or “go – between” it can further lead to the development of small, medium and sometimes large scale businesses based on creativity and innovation. From this juncture we can now go to look at entrepreneurial education.
Entrepreneurial education can be looked upon or seen to be a carefully planned process that eventuates into the acquisition of entrepreneurial competencies. The learner is equipped with skills on decision making, acquisition of new ideas, ways and styles of raising and maintaining conversations and establishing relationships in business. Entrepreneurial education relates to what Adamu (2005) refers to as the four pillars of education – learning to know; learning to do; learning to live together and learning to be.


Objectives of Entrepreneurial Education
            According to Osuala in Paul (2005:18) entrepreneurial education has been stated to meet the following specific objectives:
“To provide meaningful education for the youths to be self-reliant and encourage them to derive profit and to be self independence or self employed. To provide graduates with enough training that will make them to be creative and innovative in identifying new business opportunities. To provide college graduates with enough training in risk management; to make uncertainty bearing more possible and easy. To give the young graduates training and support to establish a career in small and medium sized businesses. To provide the graduates with training in skills that will enable them meet the manpower needs of the society. To stimulate industrial and economic growth of rural and less developed areas. To provide business enterprises both small and medium the opportunity of recruiting graduates who will be trained and tutored in the skills relevant to the management of small business centre. Entrepreneurial skills will help unemployment problems among college and tertiary institutions graduates in Nigeria”. 

Entrepreneurial Education in Nigeria
A large scale rapid national survey in 2004 sponsored by National Universities Commission (NUC) and Education Trust Fund (ETF) to determine the needs Nigerian graduates are failing to meet in the labour market. The result show that of 100 individuals and 20 organizations visited, Nigerian science graduates are rated 44 percent as average in competence, they were also rated 56 percent as average in leadership skills, 44 percent as average in creativity. On needed skills like literacy, oral communication, information technology, entrepreneurial, analytical, problem solving and decision making 60 percent rated them as poor, Nwankwo (2009), the data is seen to explain why there has been very obvious increase in unemployment rate, one of the reasons given was that these graduates were unemployable.
The graduates were further seen to exhibit the following weaknesses according to the NUC/ETF (2004) report:
*          Poor control and classroom management
*          Low subject knowledge matter
*          Lack of computer knowledge skills
*          Poor English language communication skill
*          Lack of sense of professionalism
*          Lack of self reliance and entrepreneurial skills
*          Poor attitude to work
The success of entrepreneurial education to any extent depends on a sound and proper implementation.


Entrepreneurial Education Implementation Strategies for Youth Empowerment.
In other to guarantee youth empowerment the following strategies should be religiously observed:
Increase in linking or bringing schools together: Coming together makes learning useful. This coming together shows how students feel cared for and also how they (students) too care about their school (Whitlock, 2006). According to Nwankwo et al (2009) students who perceive positive support or caring from individual adults in their schools or who perceive their teachers and school administrators as creating a caring, well structured learning environment in which expectations are high clear and fair are more likely to be connected or linked to school.
Sympathetic learning guidance: Learners should be sympathetically guided in building their awareness and personalities within their own experiences. They should be protected from situations they cannot act intelligently on their own, protected from fears and anxieties. Should be given sufficient protection for security and status on various levels, be made to conquer problems and envelop self-reliance. According to Burton (1958) in Nwankwo (2009) the learners need guidance from teachers and consultants who know and understand the problems of growing personality; who see learning as a developmental process. Guidance must be free from domination or coercion.
Observation of differences in learning: The teacher should be knowledgeable about his class pupil. This became necessary because learning patterns in students are not uniform and equal. There are slow and quick learners respectively. Varieties of teaching models should be adopted to cater for their abilities and interests to suit their levels of maturity, rates and levels of grasps. The teacher should ensure that the under listed stages are observed and followed, to suit his teaching mechanism.
a)         Age of the learner
b)        Their mental, physical, social levels and development
c)         Children’s interest and needs
d)        Content and lesson objectives
Transfer of learning in teaching: According to Nwankwo (2009), transfer to new tasks will be better if in learning, the learner can discover relationship for himself and if he has experience during learning of applying the principles within a variety of tasks. Teaching should encourage transfer of learning through pointing out the similarities and differences in ideas and issues, emphasizing on the possibilities for transfer, proper organization of the lesson, topic or unit, and ensuring that materials learned in class are seen to be interesting, meaningful and purposeful by the learners.
Cooperative/group learning: A learner centred approach system where students are grouped in about five with a teacher assigned to guide is referred to as cooperative learning. Okolodile (2009:3) had this to say, this kind of learning offers the students opportunity for effective learning experiences which translate to knowledge explosion and distribution among students whether gifted or slow learners. Green (2004), further saw this as a kind of learning characterized by learners’ participation, academic achievement, social skills acquisition and economic success.
Learners Active Participation: Teaching should provide opportunities to explore, question, construct, provision for mistakes, freedom to develop creative contributions. It has to encourage active participation of the learner. Learners should be involved in class activities, to facilitate learning activities. Children learn more in doing, as an active process, there should be a good deal of interaction between the teacher and teaching materials. The age of the learner and developmental levels should be taken into cognizance to match the situation in learning activities, it goes to make a learner/child see the relationship between what is done in school and what they do at home.

Recommendations
The current situation whereby people make career choices without recourse to the manpower needs of the nation has to be monitored so as to direct the youths to entrepreneurial studies for self reliance, in further recommendation Nwankwo (2009) added viz:
·     Teachers should not only care about their students, the teaching environment should be friendly and encouraging;
·     The teaching – learning processes should be students’ centred and activity based;
·     Teaching environment should be democratic with the teacher acting as knowledge facilitator;
·     The classroom experiences should relate to the learners’ previous experiences so as to encourage transfer of knowledge; and
·     Teachers should use different learning experiences so as to benefit all classes of learners.  

Conclusion
In line with the intense, objectives and purposes, entrepreneurial studies is a giant educational programme of study. Entrepreneurial studies and skills are very important for youth empowerment and development. This becomes clear because if the study is religiously observed and implemented it will make one self-reliant. Successful practice of entrepreneurial studies requires possession of sufficient abilities, motivation and attitudes which complement the disposition to take risks. Entrepreneurial studies reinforces common traits such as a strong desire for independence, a strong will to succeed and a practical outlook and skill in human relations as veritable parameters to youth empowerment, as already discussed and documented in this work.

REFERENCES
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Ashmore C. (2009:4). Criteria for Youth entrepreneurship Education. Entrepre News & Views: Columbus, OH The Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education 2, 30-35.

Blum R. W. (2005). A case for school connectedness. Educational leadership 62 (7) 16-20.

Federal Republic of Nigeria, (FRN, 2004). National Policy on education. Lagos: NERDC, Press.

Green, R. D. (2004).   The ideal teacher and motivated students. Journal of pedagogy and educational development 10(1) 1-10.

Ikeme E. C. (2004). Entrepreneurship and development. Ibadan: Ilasenmi Press,

Lassa P.N. (2000:46). Teacher production: A focus on Nigeria. Universal Basic education for Nigeria. Proceedings of the Education Mini Summit (Abuja, Monday 29 Nov., 1999) Federal Ministry of Education, Abuja.

Nwankwo I. N. Eziamaka, C.U. and Ilochukwu, J. O. (2009). Connectedness to School as Effective Strategy for Enhancing Students Performance in Public Secondary Schools in Ebonyi North Education Zone. Nigeria Journal of teacher education and teaching 7(2) 1-8.

Okolodile N.K. (2009). The Effectiveness of Co-operative Learning; Implications for Entrepreneurship Education. Paper presented at the 2009 National Conference of the Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, 31st August- 4th September.

Ugoh, S. C. (2008). Oil Politics and Crisis of Development in Niger Delta. Journal of sustainable development in Africa. 10(2) 91-115.
           
UNESCO (2002). Regional Training Seminar on Guidance and Counselling, Module 9 Enterprise education 2-10.
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