Nigeria: A Country With People Who See Blindly

Nigeria hasn’t seized to be a country of one day one new story, days counting like seconds, and many Nigerians just want to sleep and wake. To say the least, things have not being very easy, to be specific, for average Nigerians. Everybody just wants to survive. That the present administration is trying everything in its capacity to make her people smile cannot be overemphasized, but when a father keeps begging his family for time to see to their welfare and his efforts are unyielding, his household concludes he his failing in his capacity.

Progressive minded Nigerians have it that things would change, if only we can just be patient. What would patience without productive efforts birth? The acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo said prayer and fasting wouldn’t help our condition except the right things are put in place. And that’s not far from the truth. Developed nations around the world do enough to help their nation blossom that prayer and fasting only help things get better. Its however unfortunate some Nigerians want to fast unendingly to see their country in the ranks of developed nations. There are enough things we should be concerned about, rather than we look into ideas that can make things turn around for good in our country, we settle to discuss irrelevant issues; Nigerians want to know how much their President is spending on his health outside the country, when they should be bothered by the deteriorating state of our health sector!

In Nigeria, the small and medium enterprises sub sector has been expanding, especially since the mid-1980s. This sector accounts for about 70.0 percent of industrial employment. But what do we have of this sub sector today? Enough people are out there trying to come up with small scale businesses, but the society they owe their struggles to isn’t supportive, what’s for these people? Would things ever find feet in a country where people wake up to think of what to eat? And of course, many of this people can work or have businesses the society is only helping by strangling.

As an undergraduate student, I can’t pretend not to see the brilliant efforts of students in coming up with ideas which are capable of metamorphosing into businesses. But enough people pretend not to see this channel of helping our atrophied economy. Tertiary institution students are real thinkers, if it’s hard believing this, then there is a problem with our educational system, of course there are enough things wrong with the system, but at that, many are still thinking far outside the box. If we have people who can come up with ideas capable of developing into businesses, small or medium scale, why not invest in their ideas? Its however saddening, every government only wants to help students when they become graduates, by organising entrepreneurial trainings for them, to gain cheap popularity, and at the end of the day provide them with enough of nothing.

There is no doubt in the fact that small and medium scale enterprises are very important in any economy that wants to grow. This sector contributes 30-40 percent of all employment in USA and Europe. The Asian Tigers such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand also progressed through the development of their small and medium enterprise. Concerned stakeholders should look into empowering of tertiary institution students, as there ideas can sprout and blossom into businesses capable of reducing unemployment rate and improve the growth and development of our country. We shouldn’t wait until they add to the seemingly increasing numbers of unemployed graduates. An empowered student starts a business and invites 4 other friends to join the business, the 5 of them have no business creating problem for the society when they are done schooling, rather they are also doing one or two things connected to the development and growth of the economy. Why don’t we see easy ways of making things improve in Nigeria?

Tijani Sheriffdeen is an undergraduate student of the University of Ilorin.