Entrepreneurship Education and Employment in Nigeria

One objective of education is to ensure that the learning needs of the young people as well as the old are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills. This study, therefore attempted to examine the relationship between entrepreneurship education and employment in Nigeria. Data for the study were obtained mainly from the headquarters of Universal Basic Education, Abuja, the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, bulletins of National Educational Research and Development Council, UNDP’s Human Development Report (2002), Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, and National Bureau of Statistics. It is revealed that schools in Nigeria are characterized by outmoded operational processes and management structures which are incapable of producing graduates with the capacity to generate creative ideas and to turn such ideas into satisfying ventures. The paper therefore, recommends curriculum review in order to develop entrepreneurship skills and culture in the youth and in the adults and to keep space with the present reality. A conclusion is made that if entrepreneurship education is properly implemented and all the associated advantages harnessed, the high level of unemployment in the country will be drastically reduced. In this regard, all higher educational institutions in Nigeria should actively embrace and sustain the spirit of the emerging entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial development in Nigerian higher institutions of learning can begin by encouraging the students to replicate the products that have been invented elsewhere in any part of the world while effort is then made to create what the world will also copy from them. The entrepreneurial climate should be made favourable so that the entrepreneurship in Nigeria can evolve from the present stage to the level where the world will have cause to patronize the country’s products. This can be attained through curriculum reforms that promote the inculcation of the generic skills.