CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Many scholars have defined entrepreneurship: according to Venkataraman, it is an activity that concerns the exploration, assessment, and usage of opportunities to present new commodities, methods, process, and resources via unestablished endeavour. (Venkataraman 1997, 120; Shane & Venkataraman 2000, 219; Shane 2003, 4). Onuoha (2007, 22) defined entrepreneurship as the act of beginning new organisations or renewing developed organisations, especially new businesses generally in response to unique opportunities. The business dictionary characterised it as the capability and eagerness to advance, coordinate and deal with a business operation alongside any of its danger keeping in mind the end goal to make a benefit. Filion (2011) proposed the definition of entrepreneurship should have six main components: innovation, opportunity recognition, risk management, action, use of resources and added value. He defines an entrepreneur as an instinctive, clever, industrious performing artist who can perceive and create dangerous operation opportunities with potential for development, and who increases the value of what as of now exists by setting up exercises that include a rare utilisation of assets. (Filion 2011, 47.)

Entrepreneurship is an act of identifying and exploiting opportunities. A perspective viewed as a compelling means not just of battling unemployment, poverty and under-employment in the developing countries, but also as a technique for fast economic advancement in both developed and developing countries (Ubong 2013. 115 – 117). Scholars have also defined entrepreneur using dierent terms. Schumpeter characterised entrepreneurs as an individual misuse advertise opportunity through specialised as well as hierarchical development. These illustrations present an entrepreneur as somebody who exhibits initiative and innovative reasoning, can coordinate social and monetary components to turn assets and situations to beneficial use and acknowledges risk and disappointment. Entrepreneurs search for a way to create value, by creating, identifying and exploiting innovative ideas, procedures or markets. Entrepreneurial activity is an essential indicator and a key component in economic growth. Hence, it has a significant role to play in employment generation, innovation, increasing sales, and diversification of the economy and reduction of unemployment. (Carree & Thurik 2010, 561- 566).

Entrepreneurship education has continued to feature as a captivating theme in local summits and international conferences because of its potency as tool for mitigating unemployment and other social-economic challenges inhibiting sustainable development in all parts of the globe. Inclusive of entrepreneurship education into curricula of tertiary institutions started in the United States of America as far back as 1947 (Kuratko, 2013) unlike Nigeria where it is a recent development that dates back to 2006 (Yahya, 2011; Gabadeen and Raimi, 2012). Within a few decades (1947-1980s), over 300 universities had introduced entrepreneurship education into their array of courses. By early 1990s the number of tertiary institutions running entrepreneurship programmes increased to 1,050 schools (Kuratko, 2013). Nigeria adopted entrepreneurship education to accelerate economic growth and development. This reflected in Nigeria’s national policy on education which states that education is the most important instrument for propelling change, as no fundamental change can occur in any society except through educational revolution that impact on the intellects (FGN, 2008). Entrepreneurship education is not a new phenomenon in the annals of Nigeria; it has always been an age-long tradition, a culture and a habit that has consistently been transferred from one generation to another within the diverse ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. However, with rising population growing at geometric proportion relative to job placement that is growing at arithmetic progression, it became obvious that the nation’s formal education is fuelling unemployment, crime and cycle of poverty as graduates could not be absorbed. It then dawned on government that there is a dire need to redress the socio-economic implications of idleness and hopelessness.

In order to check the rising unemployment, surging crime rate and incidence of poverty, dierent government administrations introduced diverse poverty reduction policies (PRPs) to redress the problems and challenges highlighted above (Eriki and Okafor, 2005), thereby making Nigerians creative, innovative and resourceful to create more wealth and improve their general wellbeing. In discussing entrepreneurship with regards to education however, we are attempting to show the connection between innate and acquired abilities. Whereas some individuals are born with certain traits that allow them transform ideas into reality, others are able to do so via the process of training and capacity development (Umoren, Akpan and Ntekop, 2012; Onuaha, 2008;Umoren, 2010; Umoren and Ntekop, 2010 etc). It is for this reason that the Federal government of Nigeria has made it mandatory for entrepreneurship to be taught to all university students across the country. This directive is based on the fundamental assumption that an entrepreneurially minded individual will rather than search for elusive jobs, become a job creator for others. The understanding here is that entrepreneurship can be taught, learnt, and applied in a manner that enhances socioeconomic transformation which ultimately defaults into national development. Therefore, this study focuses on the eects of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship development.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Education and training is one of the elements contributing to entrepreneurship in a country. Hence, in this studt the focus will be on the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial activity. The importance for this relationship is additionally acknowledged by Rideout and Gray (2013), who state that there are three major barriers to entrepreneurship: social and cultural barriers, lack of capital and lack of education. Entrepreneurship education in Nigeria is faced with a lot of challenges like ineective implementation of entrepreneurship education curriculum hence the diiculty in achieving its goals, lateness in starting entrepreneurship education in Nigeria; poor funding of entrepreneurship education; and undergraduate students perceiving entrepreneurship education as one of unnecessary electives forced on them by their respective schools. Looking at the above challenges, some institutions and government have failed to prepare these students for self-reliance by not having fully equipped skill acquisition centers, on the other hand, government failing to empower few of them who acquired some skills. To douse the rising wave of mediocrity in a country, there is need for good and quality education to reduce the risk of unemployment, improve productivity, increase wages, increase technological innovation and economic growth. In addressing the issues concerning the practicability of entrepreneurial education in Nigerian universities, it requires; curriculum review, sensitization and mobilization of institutional support for entrepreneurship education, programme focus and funding together with the political will and stability of the government should be provided for entrepreneurship culture and development. These problems make it glaring that there is a need to carry out a study on the effects of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship development.