THE ROLE OF ENTREPRENEUR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIA

Introduction

1.1 Background Of The Study

Entrepreneurship begins with action, the creation of a new organization including the antecedents to its creation, scanning the environment for opportunities, identification of the opportunities to be pursued, the evaluation of the feasibility and viability of the new venture and finally venture performance and growth, however, according to Hisrich, peters and shepherd (2008) ,they state that

‘’Entrepreneurship is the process of creating something new with value by devoting the necessary time and effort, assuming financial and social risk and Receiving the reward of personal satisfaction and independence’’.

An entrepreneur generates a business idea, screen the idea, evaluate it and take risks for the success of the business. An entrepreneur is one of the factors of production that co-ordinates and organizes other factors of production (land, labour and capital) in order to produce goods and render services to members of the public, he or she bears the risk and take major decision on the business, risk the capital by setting up the business with the sole aim of obtaining maximum profit.

Hence, according to (NWACHUKWU 2005), he of the opinion that entrepreneurs are;

‘’People who have the ability to see and evaluate business opportunities, gather the necessary resources to make advantage of them and initiates appropriate Actions to ensure success’’.

An entrepreneur motivates his or herself by planning so as to establish a business venture thereby bringing resources, materials, labour and assets into combination that makes their value greater than before and also introduce changes. Innovations and new orders to make maximum output at minimum cost thereby making profit. An entrepreneur is galvanized by commitments of his or her efforts because business is full of uncertainty with the probability of success and failure. According to [Olson, 1987], he defined an entrepreneur as a

‘’Risk taking individual who establishes and manages a business for purpose of profit and growth’’

An entrepreneur succeeds only when he or she is able to identify business opportunities which require environmental scanning because the environment is a source of information and material resources. The entrepreneur must monitor, re-evaluate, and disseminate information from the internal and external environment to know whether the business will be market oriented, profit oriented, ethical, feasible, motivational, focus and specific. An entrepreneur must be courageous before he succeeds. According to (Nzelibe 1999), he states that

‘’Entrepreneurs are men and woman who are courageous, alert, and visionary? and are engaged in the network of exchange that stimulate and promote the economy’’

Motivated entrepreneur plays a vital role in the development of Nigeria economy. According to (Baumol 1990), he states that;

‘’Entrepreneurial activity and new firms formation are unquestionably considered as the engine of economic growth, innovations and development’’

The importance of new firm formation for economic growth and development has been recognized since. According to the [global entrepreneurship monitor report 2000] states that

‘’About seventy percent of the country’s economic performance solely depends on the entrepreneurs business ventures’’,

Entrepreneurial orientation in country is based on stimulating the local entrepreneurial talent and subsequent growth of indigenous companies. This in return would create employment opportunities and add economic value to a country and at the sometimes, it will keep scarce resources within the economy. According to (Petrin, 1992) he states that

’’To accelerate economic development in a country is necessary to build up the critical mass of generation entrepreneur’’

According to (Okenwa 2005) he echoes that

‘’An entrepreneur is an individual who is willing and able to take business risk with the aims and objectives of maximizing profits.

He added that an entrepreneur is a dreamer or visionary who translates the dream or vision into a mission that he would use both his mental and physical facilities and other endowments to achieve.

(Alaeze; 2009) in a study on the importance of entrepreneurs development states that;

“Entrepreneurs plan to create and unlock values by bringing together the various resources such as human resources, capital, technology to start a process and make a product or offer a service’’

According to the study conducted by (Alaeze 2009), has been found out that rural poverty has become intense as that found in the cities and has stubbornly resisted a variety of attempts at migration through economic development policies which create employment opportunities to members of the public. Reduction of social ills like poverty, death, crimes, kidnapping, cultism, etc, utilization of the available resources and improvement in the standard of living of the general public.

To the government, the motivated entrepreneur also plays an important role to them by generating revenues to them through tax and they also help in the economic development and growth hereby pulling out their own private resources to establish business ventures like shop, supermarkets, etc to beautify the country and this also brings about promoting the country and the available local resources. It is obvious that there would be no development in the Nigeria economy without the motivated entrepreneurs motivating themselves to establish business ventures and take appropriate risk for the success of the business having the willingness to exert high level of efforts to reach organizational goals conditioned by the efforts ability to satisfy some individuals needs .it is an internal energizer capable of directing behaviors in a particular direction.

According to Compaine and Litro (1984), the basic motivational sequence of an entrepreneur are:

“A felt need causes tension and uprest, the tension triggers action to resolve the need, the action achieves goals satisfaction, the tension is reduced, the specific need goes away and the process being again with another need”.

Without the entrepreneur putting out their money, resources etc to establish a business and create job for the society, assume responsibility and take risk for the business, add values to the people, there would be no development in Nigeria because entrepreneur is an attitude towards courage and destiny and these brings about self-actualization.

A motivated entrepreneur can only establish a business organization as a result of decision making, without decision in life, nothing can be done. According to Njoku and Nwosu (2010), they state that:

“Decision making involves commitments, which determines the success of an organization, decision making is a process by which a choice is made among.

Decision making involves taking the past, present and future, into consideration here, past refers to the period during which the problem arose, information was accumulated and the need for a decision was perceived. In the present, alternatives are identified and the choice made. Decision will now be implemented and reviewed in the future.

Therefore, motivated entrepreneur is a person who has the ability to identify, evaluate business opportunities and initiate appropriate actions for the success 0f the establishment. To be a motivated entrepreneur means to be someone who transforms an idea into a business reality and assume all the risks associated with such a business for the sole aim of making profit. motivated entrepreneur help in the development of Nigeria economy by establishing business ventures to create employment opportunities to members of the public to reduce poverty, crimes, cultism etc and the establishment also create revenue to the government.

The entrepreneur motivates his or herself by taking strong decision to establish business ventures, take risk for the success of a business . He or she screens the idea and environment before establishing the business venture and recognize business opportunities so that the business will yield increase.

1.2 Statement Of Problems

From the available data, the problems of motivated entrepreneur are numerous ranging from where the information are gotten.

Inability To Receive Reliable Information:

This often passed a serious problem to the entrepreneur. When they find it difficult to receive, develop, maintain contacts and reliable sources of information to strive and do things better, faster and more economically to improve on past performance and maintain high level of excellence.

Inability Of Managing Risk:

It is obvious that many entrepreneurs does not have risk taking, risk bearing ability, to face challenges so as to provide a better goods or services to members of the public, taking necessary action to overcome an obstacle, make sacrifices or make special effort to complete a task, confront problems or difficult situation and move ahead.

Weak Courage:

Weak courage destroys success and success does not answer for fear. Most entrepreneurs are not courageous enough to establish business ventures, withstand the challenges, strategies to influence or persuade others, believes strongly on his or her ability, project confidence on their own ability to completed difficult specific task.

Poor Environmental Scanning:

It is a good environmental scanning that helps the entrepreneurs to discover good business opportunities that is in the environment but most entrepreneurs can’t scan the business environment and even the product to know whether it will be market oriented, profit, oriented, legal, ethical etc since the work of the entrepreneur is to search for non-exiting things to produce.

Poor Planning:

Entrepreneurs fail because of poor planning, due to the fact that they do not develop and use a methodical approach to reach goals and objectives, evaluate alternatives, monitor the continuous progress and switches strategies when necessary to achieve the goals whether long, medium or short term goals.

Specification Query:

Cases abound when the entrepreneur cannot alter the available goods to produce a new one so as to exploit changes in market conditions and when the available product dose not meet the market requirement, this result in what is known as “specification query” this is resolved by the consumers rejecting the product good or service out rightly.

Inability To Recognize Business Opportunities:

The problems associated with why motivated entrepreneurs fall is that they fail to analyze and evaluate business opportunities and ideas. They do not fail because they make mistake or commit errors at the start up stage but their inability to fully subject their business ideas and recognize opportunities to test has been the reason for the failure of most entrepreneurship activities.

1.3 Purpose Of The Study

The following are the reasons why the researcher chooses to write on this topic “the role of entrepreneur in the development of Nigeria.

Stimulation:

Is to stimulate interest in entrepreneurship activities for economic revival and sustenance

Adequate Planning:

To stress the need for adequate planning before starting up a business venture so that the business will not fail. The motivated entrepreneur is to plan well on the type of goods to produce and what type of services to render to members of the public, employment of experienced worker so that the establishment will not lack behind, adoption to change in terms of technological changes because crude tools that is used in production waste time and the raw materials available, so in order to fasten productivity, mechanized tools should be used.

Entrepreneurial Constraint:

The purpose of this study is to suggest the possible solution that will help and assist the business organizations to withstand both the internal and external obstacle constraint that may affect the organizational management.

High Degree Of Business Uncertainty:

Another factor that militates against the rise of entrepreneur is the high level of uncertainty associated with business of enterprise ownership in Nigeria. There is a constant threat by government through frequent changes in laws, regulations and high degree of tax are hostile to business and entrepreneurial development as well as social and political instability. Since nothing is as certain in business as uncertainty, one has to expect changes monetary, credit and fiscal policies with their consequent impact on business operation.

Indifference Of Financial Institution:

The inability or unwillingness of the financial institutions to respond to the financial needs and demands of enterprises is another factor militating against entrepreneurial development. Lack of funds has acted restrictively in many ways to limit the number of entrepreneurial ventures. Many entrepreneurs in Nigeria today cannot use the financial opportunity provided by the establishment stock exchange because of stringent conditions of the exchange and some cannot even apply for loans from the banking institutions because they do not know how to go about it in terms of how to package a loan request and in most cases do not have strong acceptable collateral as usually demanded by the financial institutions.

Nepotism:

This is also know, as man know, syndrome, it limit the level of employment of the most qualified applicant if they are not related to the entrepreneur and even when the most qualified non-relative of the entrepreneur is employed, the applicant soonest realizes that he is only “baby sitting” waiting until the relative is groomed to take over. The purpose of this study. is to suggest the possible ways to reduce nepotism so as to decrease the level of unemployment in Nigeria.