BoI moves to cut graduate unemployment with N2bn entrepreneurship fund

Worried by high rate of youth unemployment in Nigeria, the Bank of Industry (BoI) has launched the N2 billion Graduate Entrepreneurship Fund (GEF) scheme to enable young graduates with viable business ideas to receive training and finance.

Rasheed Olaoluwa, managing director/chief executive of BoI, said each beneficiary of GEF could access a minimum loan of N500,000 and a maximum of N2 million for the procurement of machinery and equipment and for working capital, at a single digit interest rate of 9 percent, with a loan tenor of three to five years (including six months moratorium).

According to Olaoluwa, the product, which is designed for members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), will be available to any serving NYSC member that has successfully registered a business as an enterprise or limited liability company, as well as registered and applied online for the GEF Entrepreneurship Capacity Building Programme on the BOI GEF portal: www.boi.ng/gef (using NYSC State code as a unique identification number).

“The 1,000 successful applicants will subsequently be invited to the three-day GEF capacity building programme at the designated centres, at the end of which they will qualify to apply for loans in respect of their various business ideas,” Olaoluwa said on Monday, during the launch of the scheme at the bank’s head office in Lagos.

The GEF scheme is meant to address the entrepreneurial capacity and funding gaps of the serving members of the NYSC to address youth unemployment estimated at over 50 percent. Data show that, of the over 250,000 graduates of Nigerian tertiary educational institutions that enrol in the NYSC scheme each year, over 41 percent of them are without employment after the mandatory NYSC programme.

Johnson Bamidele Olawumi, director-general, NYSC, said when the NYSC scheme started earlier in the 1970s, it was targeted at national integration which was a critical issue then, but stated that the scheme had become necessary as the contemporary issue in the country now was unemployment.

While Olaoluwa stated that what were required for accessing the fund included capacity and funding, Olawumi added that it was also important for the government to put in place policies that would enable young entrepreneurs who benefit from the scheme to succeed.

“We need to encourage local production. It is always annoying that when you board an aircraft, you discover that most of the things they serve there are foreign. At NYSC, we will fulfil our own part,” the NYSC DG said.

Mary Dan-Abia, NYSC director of Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED), said the scheme had become timely as many young graduates with great ideas could not find anybody to finance them.

Onari Duke, country director, Empretec Nigeria Foundation and former first lady of Cross River State, said except Nigeria prepared her youth, foreigners would always take opportunities in the country.

“We are dependent, as a country, on you will make out of this,” Duke told the would-be beneficiaries.

Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien, founder, Growing Businesses Fundation, said persistence was key in entrepreneurship. Nnoli-Edozien advised the youths to look out for good mentors, while also urging them not to ignore those from whom they learnt their ideas.