Experts have canvassed the establishment of Entrepreneurship and Start-Up Bank to increase lending to start-ups and small businesses.
Sunday Abayomi, associate professor and acting director, University of Lagos Entrepreneurship and Skills Development Center (ESDC), said such a bank will fund innovative ideas from young Nigerians.
Abayomo, who spoke at the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI)’s annual Entrepreneurship Summit held on Thursday in Lagos, called for a five-year tax holiday for start-ups to enable them navigate rough terrains in the economy.
“The government should set up what I call an entrepreneurship and start-up bank. They must also look at a situation where the multinationals that have taken so much from this nation should contribute 0.5 percent of their profit into a pool, whereby such a pool is seen as an entrepreneurship start-up fund that will be used to develop ideas in the country,” he said.
“Such pool will have mentors that will evaluate these ideas to identify bankable projects,” he said.
Abayomi said such a move has become necessary owing to high unemployment rate, which is 23.1 percent at the moment.
“It is very important for us to know that the unemployment rate in the country is a bubble and it is at a point of bursting,” he warned.
“With a youth population of 60 percent,, which is age 17 to 35, it will shock everyone that we have about 120 million youths in this nation and there is a statistics that says that 38.9 percent of them are unemployed. That amounts to about 43 million people not employed. This is twice the capacity of Ghana and Sierra Leone. This is shocking and we must rise up to this occasion.
He disclosed that his centre patented 11 ideas last year and 15 businesses are being lined up to be registered for students of Unilag free of charge.
Babatunde Ruwase, president of the LCCI, said creation of a modern, flexible and knowledge-based economy requires the growth of entrepreneurial firms, adding that Nigerians are among the most entrepreneurial people on earth.
“Good and stable government policies, provision of adequate infrastructural facilities like electricity, water, road network, and communication system, among others, are what entrepreneurs need to succeed,” he said.
“What government can do is to do more in areas of intervention funding. They can make more money available to banks to support sectors that are critical while also making the conditions for borrowing these funds relaxed,” he added.
Damilola Oloruntade, COO of A-Mobile Limited, a sanitation and event firm, said she started with N25,000 when she returned to Nigeria 12 years ago, but has grown in a way that underscores the opportunity in the country.
“You cannot be an entrepreneur if you are not innovative and creative,” she said.
Temitope Ogunsemo of Krystal Digital Solutions, explained that there is a need to move away from manual processes to digital to eliminate wastes.
ODINAKA ANUDU
