BoI, First Bank, AGDC set to raise 1m new entrepreneurs

The Bank of Industry (BoI), First Bank of Nigeria Limited and the Afterschool Graduate Development Centre (AGDC) have announced plans to raise one million new entrepreneurs in the country.

This is in recognition of the fact that entrepreneurship aids creativity and can address the high level of unemployment in Nigeria.

Waheed Olagunju, acting managing director, said  there was an urgent need to bring down the level of unemployment in the nation to single digit, maintaining that the nation would be sitting on a time bomb of youth restiveness if nothing was done in the next two to three years to address the scourge.
Olagunju, during a courtesy visit to Ibukun Awosika, managing director, First Bank of Nigeria Limited, said: “We at BoI also know that we need to create a high level of entrepreneurs. We need to have high numbers of entrepreneurs because we cannot solve the high level of unemployment in this country except we increase the number of entrepreneurs.”
The acting MD, however, said the development finance institution (DFI) had just launched its youth empowerment programme and was expected to turn out about 1200 entrepreneurs, but added that the country needed more than that number to create the proportionate employment opportunities for its teeming unemployed youths.

According to him, under our Youth Empowerment Scheme (YES) programme, BoI was expecting that there would be 10,000 applicants and was looking at about turning out about 1200 applicants yearly.
“We know this cannot go a long way in the country considering its size. This is why we are looking forward to collaborating with development partners in this country to get a high number of entrepreneurs. To tackle the unemployment situation in this country, we need to bring the unemployment rate to single-digit, which means we ought to have created about 15 million new jobs in the country. If we do not act fast in the next two to three years, we will have boys on the street coming to attack us,” he further said.
“Under our Graduate Empowerment Fund (GEF), we have received over 3000 applications, where we invited 1000 for the capacity building  and only 800 showed up. Out of the 800, only 350 applied. Last year, we had plans to disburse 15 billion but only disbursed N5.6 to those who qualified. This year, we are targeting N30 billion,” the BoI’s acting CEO said.
Earlier, Ibukun Awosika, MD, First Bank of Nigeria Limited, had said the partnership with BoI was a step in the right direction to help the nation address its high rate of unemployment in the country, pointing out that Nigeria had got a dire situation where there were too many unemployed young people owing to lack of viable businesses in the country.

“We are looking at raising the next one million new entrepreneurs who can at least employ two people in the first year and if you add the two people plus the entrepreneur, that will be three million jobs being created in the first year,” Awosika said.  

“The only way we can keep moving the economy forward and also taking care of social issues including employment, is that we must create jobs and creating jobs is about building the entrepreneurs,” she added.

ODINAKA ANUDU