The Challenges of Starting and Running a Business in Nigeria: The Way Forward

Abstract

Awareness creation for entrepreneurship development in Nigerian tertiary institutions is a recent development and a step in the right direction, geared towards promoting self reliance and disabusing the minds of teaming Nigerian graduates against perpetually waiting for white collar jobs that may not be forthcoming. The developed countries around the world, such as China, Germany, USA, Japan, Britain, France etc, have their economies rested on the pillars of grass root entrepreneurship, developing small and medium scale industries. Developing these categories of organisations demands a lot of support in terms of provision of finance and infrastructure to support the foundational needs of the entrepreneurial efforts. Incidentally, the experience of the Nigerian entrepreneurs from independence in 1960 up to date has been one of a total counter-productive dynamics of self defeat in industrial growth and development. Governments of the Nigerian nation both at federal, state and the local governments have always succeeded paying lip service to industrial development through effective support to medium and small scale industries (MSSIs). Myriads of special programmes incorporating both financial and technical support inputs have been initiated by various governments in Nigeria, and sometimes including mouth-watering support initiatives and grant offers through multilateral financial institutions like the World Bank, African Development Bank and Development Financial Institutions (DFIs) across the world. Most of these grants and developmental financial initiatives have been received as support programmes for MSSIs by various governments in Nigeria, but unfortunately, the implementation and delivery of such grants have been abused at the point of implementation through mal-administration and corruption. Additionally, the peculiar challenges of the operators of small and medium scale industries which militate against the survival, growth and development of the organisations, including failure of proper accountability for organisational resources, refusal to accept partnership to guarantee continuity, failure to raise appropriate capital from new investors to support the entrepreneurs limited resources and all sorts of challenges continue to premise the Nigerian entrepreneurs on a faulty foundation. The above factors have contributed to denying the Nigerian entrepreneurs the needed support for establishment and growth, which has been the bane to industrial growth and development in Nigeria since independence. This research is focused at investigating the challenges of starting and running a business in Nigeria and the way forward.