By Sunday Ani
No fewer than 150 students drawn from different schools in Lagos have been empowered by the Eastern Entrepreneur Organisation (EEO), with various skills and equipment to start various businesses.
This was disclosed on Saturday by the EEO’s President General, Chris Haywood Madubuike, at the organization’s world entrepreneurs summit and awards 2023
Madubuike said the students were trained at different times on such skills as shoemaking, tailoring and fashion designing, and web designing among others. “Some of them were also trained in buying and selling and eventually established with a startup capital. In empowering the students, we are curbing the level of criminality in the country and we are also providing jobs. We want to ensure that they achieve business ownership and make money while in school to help themselves and their families. There is a high degree of unemployment in the country today,” he said.
He also informed that the organization would, in the next 30 years, industrialize Nigeria with its ‘Every space investment’ campaign. “Here, students will be given an opportunity to carry out a feasibility study on any business, and a student that has the best feasibility study on how to produce anything will be supported to do that. With the model, we will create industrial clusters and within the next 30 years, Nigeria can be industrialized,” he said.
However, Madubuike outlined other projects lined up by the EEO to include entrepreneur women, and the eastern development project, which is aimed at encouraging the Igbo to return their investment to the South East.
Speaking about the eastern development project, he said: “We discovered that the Igbo have abandoned their home to develop other people’s homes and they are being ostracized and persecuted everywhere they go. They have been issued quit notices here and there, and their properties are being demolished everywhere. But, we want to encourage them to invest in the East also and that project is called every space investment campaign. What that means is that every little space we have in the East, we invest because the Lagos economic miracle is just the population.”
He thanked organizations like the Cway which he said has been supporting the organization even as he called on other well meaning Nigerians and organizations to support them. “We need sponsors; we need people to help us because the project is massive and capital intensive,” he added.
Also speaking, the councillor representing Ward B, Amuwo Odofin in Amuwo Odofin Local Government Area, told the students that entrepreneurship is about bringing out what one has in him or her.
He used Jacob in the bible to illustrate his teaching on entrepreneurship, saying, “Human mind is infinite; people can only stop you physically, they can’t stop you mentally. As an entrepreneur, don’t play with information and that comes through reading. So, you must be versatile in reading to always get more information.”
However, the Executive Director/Head of Business, PWAN Group, Chidinma Joy Ogu-Chedozie, equally told the students that as they go into the world of entrepreneurship, they must be prepared to take risks.
Speaking on the topic, “Entrepreneur in Real Estate,” she revealed why one should go into the real estate business to include diversification, massive potential for appreciation, networking opportunities, cash flow, inflation hedge, tangible asset, potential to generate passive income and legacy buildings among others.