‘I started conducting skills training for youths as an undergraduate’

Olawale Ayilara, a consummate entrepreneur, who considers the Petrol-Chemical Science he studied at the Tai Solarin University of Education, Ogun State, as one of his wrong decisions in life, dreams of establishing a business hub where all skills will be housed for the creation of employment, wealth, youth empowerment and appreciable contributions to the nation’s economy. He also believes  that the country’s education system should lay more emphasis on vocational and skills acquisition rather than science and technology that may not have any positive impact on the Nigerian economy.

Business

Olawale Ayilara, 25, trains youths, whether graduates or unlettered, on different skills acquisition and vocational programmes through his registered enterprise – The Eagles Insight and Innovations. He runs a business outfit that trains youths for certificate programme and a three-month diploma programme on various vocations under the Schools of Media and Communication, Fashion and Beauty, Computer and Information Technology, Graduate Employability and Development, Hospitality and Catering as well as Human Resources Service.

Ayilara, who disclosed that he had trained over 500 youths in different vocations in recent years, said: “It’s something I have been doing during by undergraduate years. I started Student Business School in the campus. I would train students on Skills Acquisition, I would also take them through the process of how they can own businesses, register businesses. We have been doing Skills Acquisition and we have done it so well. We have brought professionals to conduct the training, even after the training, some of our trainees can go to them for internship, we also use some of the ex-students as assistant instructors after training, so we give them job opportunity and we pay them.”

Background

Ayilara studied Petrol-Chemical Science and started organising business workshops and conferences in 2009, right there from his undergraduate years where he created a registered human resources service. According to him, “we have been running it since 2009, we developed events and created Abeokuta Business Development Conference in 2009, workforce event for workers and civil servants in Ogun State and top achievers. So, we have created so many business-related events in our HR services.”

Inspiration

Where I went to retake my O’ Level exams was my starting point. I had access to so much information, that was my brother’s house. I read a lot of books. I would say that I was motivated by some information I had encounter, and I am inspired by greatness. If you can learn, you will earn and if you can read, you will lead. It’s just that we are in a crazy world where we’re so much crazy about certificate. Also, my mother is very enterprising, I think I inherit my enterprising acumen from my mother; my mother is very industrious.

Challenges

What I have encountered is a lot of competitions. When people see people coming into one business, they will think there is a lot of money in that business. If you don’t have passion for social enterprises, you will be out of this business very soon. It’s all about passion. A lot of people would go and start the same thing and start giving people quack training, quack skills and yet they will collect money. For us, we go beyond just training them, there is a lot of follow-up techniques that we do for them. There are also some challenges in sourcing experts to train, especially for somebody like me who considers excellence. I am also looking into the collaboration with financial institutions like Bank of Industry (BoI) if we can raise start-up loans to empower our graduates.

Prospects

I know a season is about to be created. I know in 10 years, when it comes to business and social development I don’t have doubt in my mind that by that time, I would have created business hub; I would have trained and empowered over 100,000 youths. My mission is that one day, I will train people on how to assemble cars, generators; take people to Japan to learn that and bring them back to Nigeria to make meaningful and effective economic turnaround.