Wealth Creation for the Nigerian Youths and Sustainable National Economic Development in Nigeria through Entrepreneurship and Information and Communication Technology

Abstract

As Nigeria marks her fifty-two years of independence, ‘this giant of Africa’ with a population of over 140 million, is blessed with abundant mineral, material, human, and financial resources. With many of these resources yet untapped, there are numerous challenges confronting the nation which include abject poverty, low standard of living, low rate of economic growth, corruption, insecurity, unemployment, over-dependence on petroleum products and foreign goods and inadequate power supply, among others. The present state of insecurity and incidence of petty and serious crimes in the country has direct bearing on the issue of unemployment among the youths in Nigeria. In order to tackle these problems, certain programmes and policies have been adopted by successive governments. These includes National Economic Empowerment Development Strategies ( NEEDS), Nigeria Bank for Commerce and Industries (NBC), National Directorate of Employment (NDE), National Economic Reconstruction Fund ( NERFUND), Poverty Eradication Programme, Small- Scale Industry Scheme ( SSIS), Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), Operation Feed the Nation ( OFN), Green Revolution (GR), State Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy ( SEEDS), Local Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (LEEDS), Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (CED) and Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YouWin), among others. This paper therefore examines the role of entrepreneurship and Information and Communication Technology in wealth creation for the Nigeria youths toward enhancing a sustainable national economic development. Entrepreneurship and Information Communication Technology can provide a platform for inculcating the necessary skills, innovative abilities and creative capabilities in youths which should prepare them to function well in business and become self-reliant and employers of labour. The paper therefore recommends that government should create enabling environment for foreign investments, transform agricultural sector, provide adequate power supply, encourage indigenous entrepreneurs to expand their markets in order to employ youths, revive textiles and other manufacturing industries and strengthens the existing ones’ and also take proactive measures on the issue of insecurity as well as provide affordable ICT infrastructural facilities to run business centres. If these are properly put in place, the paper stresses an affordable and enabling environment would have been created for both the indigenous and foreign investors to make Nigeria their destination thereby creating more jobs for the teeming youths.