Entrepreneurship is the process of bearing non-insurable risk by perceiving, evaluating and capturing business opportunities, marshalling, allocating and deploying relevant resources to take advantage of them, and initiating appropriate strategic, tactical and operational actions to ensure, assure and sustain success. It can also be viewed as the processes of floating, launching, operating, coordinating and sustaining an independent growth-oriented venture designed to accomplish missionary objectives.
It is a statement of fact that the government at all levels cannot provide employment opportunities for its citizens. Those that are even on the employment list of the government are very insignificant, less than 5% of the entire population. Business opportunities are very abundant in the country but the government needs to create a very enabling environment for all various business opportunities to thrive.
For example, the business opportunities that are available in Agro based and Allied industries are Rice: rice, rice flour, rice crispiest; Cassava: garri, cassava flour, starch, packed whole cassava (frozen or cooked); Yam: yam flour, yam flakes (for pounded yam), yam chips, mashed yam; Beans: packaged beans, beans flour, canned beans with or without meat products; Pineapples: pineapple juice, canned pineapples mixed with other fruits, pineapple drinks; Oranges: orange juice, orange drinks, canned orange pieces; Mango: mango juice, mango drinks; Tomatoes: tomato juice, tomato puree, tomato paste, bottled/canned whole tomatoes, tomato sauce, dried package tomato soup; Guava: guava juice, guava jam; Potatoes: potato chips, french fried, canned whole potato, potato flakes, mashed potatoes; Plantain: plantain chips, dodo; Banana: banana chips, banana ice butter; Groundnut: canned/bottled groundnut, salted groundnuts, groundnuts cakes, groundnut oil, peanut butter; Cashew nut: canned/bottled cashew nuts, salted cashew nuts, cake, canned cashew juice; Cocoyam: cocoyam flour, cocoyam chips; Leaf vegetables: leaf package, dried vegetables; Carrots: packaged beef broth, canned beef, brisket; Goat: packaged goat meat parts; Turkey: package turkey- whole/parts, sliced turkey; Chicken: packaged whole/parts chicken, sliced chicken, chicken broth, packaged dried soup mixes; Sheep: packaged mutton; Pig: packed pork meat, bacon, sausage, cooking fat (lard); Letuce (cabbage): package cooked cabbage, sliced cabbage with sauces; Fish: packaged fish, fresh or frozen, fish fillets, smoked fish, canned fish, fish cakes, dried fish, stock fish; Snails: packaged snails-fresh/dried, canned snails; Corn: packaged flour, animals feeds, break-fast cereals; Coconut: coconut oil, coconut sweets; Onion/Garlic: package dried, grated or powdered onion, bottle picked onions; Mushrooms: canned mushrooms, package mushrooms, soup mushroom sauce; Shrimps: packaged fresh shrimps, frozen shrimps, fried shrimps, shrimps sauce; Cocoa butter: wine, chocolate, beverage drinks and Timber: furniture, components, fibreboards, veneers.
Equally, the business opportunities in mechanical and metallurgical industry are Galvanized steel buckets, Aluminum and stainless steel household utencils, Tin containers, Angle iron rods, Wire drawing, Wire nails and roofing nails, Barbed wires, Wire netting and fencing, Wood and machine screws, Bolts, Nuts, Panel pins, Rivets, Metal doors and windows, Burglary, Conduit pipes, Steel furniture, Tower bolts, Hinges, Metal boxes or suit cases, Steel tanks, water tanks, petrol, kerosene and oil tanks, Auto leaf spring, Automobile radiators, Steel cabinets, Rolling shutters, Iron weights, Pipe fittings, Locks, Soldering and welding rods, Wrenches, spanners, nail pullers and hammers, Sanitary fittings i.e taps, bib cocks, Water pumps, Power presses, Hard presses, Drill machines, Lathe machines, Wood working machinery, Band saw blades, Hacksaw blades, Cutting saw, Agricultural implements, Auto beam light, Auto silencers, Accessories for high voltage transmission lines, Grinding and polishing wheels abrasives, Metal working tools, Geometry boxes, Aluminum building fittings, Crown caps and Engine blocks.
Furthermore, the government should make jobs of political office holders who contribute so little but earn so much less attractive. Regrettably, these political office holders cannot even establish any venture with the ill gotten wealth when such ventures can be established in rural areas knowing fully well that the urban centres are becoming saturated. This is not a tactic support for corruption; all illegally acquired money should be recovered and the perpetrators punished accordingly.
On the other hand, the entrepreneur (originator, innovator, masterminder, the establisher, the operator, the sustainer of the venture, etc) must posses achievement and task-oriented traits, qualities, attributes or characteristics. These are independence (I am on my own), self-starving drive, willingness to take moderate insurable and non-insurable risks, ability to make good decision possession with good product or service idea, urge to make profits, ability to influence others towards desired results, gestational endurance enterprise building skill, versatility and agility, task-adjustment ability, environmental adjustment ability, strategic ability, ability to sustain success, ability to resolve and reconcile conflicts, ability to cope with relations and difficulties.
Entrepreneurship creates a venture. The venture may be economic, commercial, social, political, technological, medical or spiritual. Entrepreneurship is geared to the realization of profit, poverty alleviation, socio-economic independence, employment generation, power accumulation achievement, etc. Entrepreneurship is a means for bringing about national development in general and socio-economic development of a society in particular. However, the entrepreneurs must borne in their minds that every business passes through three stages viz: loss, break-even point and profit.
For an entrepreneur to excel, he requires a level playing field, an enabling environment, macro socio-politico-economic stability and socio-economic assistance or support from the external environment. The inclusion of an external environment which the entrepreneur has no total control over, but which he can only respond to means he should be ready to bear certain risks and uncertainties e.g risks of price for supplies and outputs, loss of total efforts, loss of market segments, personal and non-personal losses.
Undertaking the entrepreneurship function therefore is not the exclusive right any individual, group, society or nation. It does not discriminate against age, gender, income, status, location, religion, ethnicity, race, colour or tongue differences. Anybody or group that is able, capable, available and willing can undertake entrepreneurship ventures.
As a form of encouragement, government should give tax relief (in forms of tax holiday, tax rebate and tax exception) to the entrepreneurs who should have access to loans with little or no interest for a specific period of time. Fresh graduates who are willing to become entrepreneurs can even use their certificates as collateral in securing loans.
In conclusion, if all these efforts and others not mentioned are given adequate consideration by the government, the entrepreneurs will be encouraged to produce what are needed in the country thereby shunning importation more so, some of these imported goods have close substitutes in Nigeria. This will eventually lead to an increase in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
..Ayankunbi is MD/CEO at AbingMO3 Marketing Management Consultancy
abiolaayankunbi@yahoo.com
0802 305 1315
