Govt should sustain youth empowerment policies to achieve results — Kohol

What have you doing to promote entrepreneurship? One thing I will like the Nigerian youth to know is the ability to develop ideas in such a manner that it can eventually yield tangible results. Working very hard as entrepreneurs is just the only way they can make their life better and even reduce the alarming rate of unemployment. We try to explore ways which they can key into entrepreneurship activities to see how they can better their lives and their immediate environment because we feel development is very essential to kick start in the grassroots. been youth

You recently had a youth summit in Abuja, what were your deliberations?

The purpose of the summit was Chris Kohol is the national president of the Young Entrepreneurs of Nigeria. In this exclusive interview with he discusses the relevance and challenges of young entrepreneurs in the Nigerian setting and advocates for more government intervention. to galvanize the youth and be able to of unemployment which is the main empower youth entrepreneurship cause of the modern slave trade we are development and we have empowered encountering today in. about 70,000 youths across the nation. How large is your membership base? We have about 8.9 million members across the 36 states of the federation, in the United States of America and in the United Kingdom.

What are your plans for the entrepreneurship network in Nigeria?

In the year coming we want to make the network worldwide in other countries. Our major project now is to expand our membership and presence beyond Africa and penetrate developing countries as we have Nigerians there who are not gainfully employed to encourage them on how to be productive.

What is your view about youth who leave Nigeria to seek for jobs abroad?

First and foremost the blame is to be shared, from the part of government and the youths. On the part of youths, they are to be blamed because they couldn’t see any venture to key in, but rather leave the country illegally and find themselves in this mess. Also on the part of the government, I feel they should do better especially in the area

How do you think the problem of unemployment can be addressed?

One of the problems that make unemployment persist in this Nigeria is that there have been a lot of policies on ground that has been put in place by the government but the major challenge is the sustenance of such policies. We have the YouWin and the Anchor Borrowers Programme and a whole lot but if you take a close look at them, accessibility of such programmes has always been a problem.

An enabling environment ought to be created so that these young people to thrive in their various businesses. You can’t prosper or succeed under unfavourable business conditions. So I think if the environment is good, nothing will make them leave this country.

What have been the challenges that YEN has experienced?

I think what our members are facing is adequate funding especially in the aspect of accessing loans through financial institutions like the Bank of Industry or the Central Bank of Nigeria. So in situation where funding is difficult, it slows that interest in engaging in some ventures due to financial constraints.