Uche Henry
A Political Economist, Pat Utomi, has advised young entrepreneurs to pursue expertise first before seeking profits in all their legal endeavors.
Utomi made this disclosure at the second annual Youths Empowerment Summit put together by Young Entrepreneurs of Nigeria (YEN) in Lagos, recently.
The economist who spoke on “Beyond Oil” said Nigeria needs to grow beyond its oil source of revenue, in order to develop like other economies. He said: “We need to go beyond oil and the oil we need is our creativity and innovative spirit to produce goods and services, if we must advance. What we need to do is to extract and showcase our intrinsic oil which is our skills and talents in other to produce the extrinsic oil which may be in form of wealth or reaching our diverse aspirations in life.” He charged youths to use the present economic condition as a trigger to spark off their potential to produce quality products and services which will precede rewards. “Let the present situation spur you to be creative and Innovative, because it is situations like this that gave rise to inventions,” he added.
Addressing journalists, the President of YEN, Chris Kohol, stressed that youth empowerment remains the feasible and viable solution to youth restiveness which has led to major socio-economic and political quagmire in the country.
According to him, idleness of the body and minds of young people has given rise to increased vices in the country, adding that if the youths are engaged economically and otherwise, it would go a long way in curbing the social ills in the country. He, therefore, called on government, investors and other professionals to pull resources together and empower the youths economically if Nigeria must come out from what he described as “economic mess”.
“The goal of the summit is to empower selected participants across the country in business mentorship, capacity building, business support and tools, finance and networking to foster entrepreneurship for national development, because youth empowerment remains the panacea to socio-economic and political woes,” Kohol said.