CHAPTER ONE
- Background of the Study
The concept of entrepreneurship serves as a core variable towards the development of any economy. According to Okechukwu O. C. (2009), the word entrepreneur is French, literally translated, means “between taker” or “go between”.
“Entrepreneurship” by Solomon and Winslow (1988) means “the process of creating something new with value by developing the necessary time and effort, assuming the accompanying financial, psychological, social risks and uncertainties, and receiving the resulting rewards of monetary and personal satisfaction.
As we can see, entrepreneurship has to do with the persistent of opportunities to create wealth through innovative creation of products or services that meet the needs of the public, using scare resources in any way that result in growth enterprises which satisfy the expectation of stakeholders whose roles sustain the business.
It is therefore the process which involves a vision of a future state regarding idea, product or services. This process has played vital roles in the economic development of any nation.
It has been pointed out at various times and with varying degrees of emphasizes that entrepreneurship creates employment for the teaming population of any nation. In Nigeria, for instance, it is document that small and medium scale business, the catalyst of entrepreneurship, employs about 30% of the entire labour force (Acquah, 1986).
Entrepreneurship activities help to transform the traditional sector thereby helping in the economic development of a nation and state. In one aspect, it helps in modernizing the people’s perception of life, and in another, it modernizes the traditional handicraft prevalent in the rural economics, by introducing the use of machines instead of manual labour in most economic. Again, the skills of traditional craftsmen are modernized and synchronized with the developments in entrepreneurial activities.
Entrepreneurship helps to mobilize resources that would otherwise remain idle in the hands of people and employ them productively. By so doing, capital formation which is a vital engine of economic growth is encouraged.
As a result of numerous economic activities entrepreneurship activities make large quantities of goods and services available to people. With increased supply of goods and services individual’s demands increase as well. This increase in demand, in turn, results in a better standard of living, for the people.
The entrepreneur’s entrepreneurship is a vital contribution to the total economic and social achievement that calls for initiating possible strategies for building the needs capacities, and proper management policies for effective coordination of resources toward inculcating the spirit of independence, enterprises, innovation and nationalism.
Having a bearing on the above, Akwa Ibom State government, through such bodies as Ministry of Economic Development (MED) and Akwa Ibom State investment corporation (AKICORP), in attempt to manage state affairs to realize optimum robust and manifest growth, displays successive applicable activities by empowering “private take the lead” in the state economy.
Besides, the state is blessed with several untapped mineral resources, a potential that have learnt itself to the industrialization drive of government.