Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said that the need to scale up the various social intervention of the government of Muhammadu Buhari has informed the urgent need for the establishment of Entrepreneurship Bank in Nigeria.
“The Federal government has in the past four years sought to prioritize initiatives designed to improve the capacity of entrepreneurs and small businesses. These include: Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme; Growth and Employment Project; the Youth Entrepreneurship Development Programme and many more spearheaded by the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Bank of Industry and the Federal Ministry of Trade, Industry and Investment.
“The truth is that a lot of these initiatives are not on scale. We have several initiatives and several thousands have benefitted but to make the kind of impact that we want to make we simply have to do something that can deal with hundreds of thousands of people as opposed to a few thousands. And that is the reason why in the next four years it is our intention to take a more active look at how to scale up the interventions of the Federal Government. This is why we are setting up an Entrepreneurship Bank which is one of the key ways by which we can directly finance entrepreneurship.
Professor Osinbajo, who spoke at the National Youth Entrepreneurship Empowerment Summit in Abuja, said that at the moment, a lot of entrepreneurship activities are built around the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) or the Bank Of Industry (BOI) and several other banks, “but we think that we need to devote a whole financial institution to look at how to develop entrepreneurship and how to encourage small and medium size enterprises.
“In the past three days, you have been taught by some of the best in various businesses, most of them with very compelling stories. The subtext of every one of the testimonies you have heard is that it doesn’t matter what challenges you face, with steadfastness, courage and innovation your business will succeed.”
