The Nexus between Entrepreneurship Development and Diversification of Nigerian Economy

Nigerian economy is mono-cultural dependence on a single commodity-oil, while other sectors of the
economy have been relegated or neglected since the discovery of oil, and the management of oil
revenues has proven inefficacious in driving the economy to bring about the needed level of growth
talk less of development. This has the serious negative implementation on the nation’s development,
as good percentage of Nigerians still live in abject poverty and unemployment is on the increase in the
country. In respect of this, the paper seeks possible ways to diversify productive sectors of Nigerian
economy. It is revealed that considering Nigeria’s peculiar circumstances and successes recorded
before the advent of oil, for Nigeria to break loose from the problems inherent in a monotype-economy
dominated by oil, which is subject to depletion, international price shocks and unfavourable quota
arrangement, there is need for diversification of Nigerian economy for National development. This
paper therefore, utilized data generated through structured questionnaire from 36 states of the
federation and the federal capital territory, descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data and it
revealed that there is a positive relationship between entrepreneurship development and
diversification of Nigerian economy. The paper as well depicts the importance of Entrepreneurship as
a realistic mechanism for the diversification of Nigerian economic development. It discusses that
entrepreneurship has been instrumental in economic development and job creation in most of the
developing economies, and training on entrepreneurship is one of the possible option for
diversification of the Nigerian economy. The paper recommended that government should have
interest and support entrepreneurship with finance, access to licences/permit, taxes and to be
included in the curriculum of studies from primary school to tertiary level. Despite the fact that the
Nigerian economy has experienced a steadily growth over the last decade, that growth was however
moving at a slow pace as a result of the countries dependence on a natural resource; which is
exhaustible in nature and unsustainable and had experienced set back in the international market.
This study revealed that economic diversification can be achieved through developing
entrepreneurship with machinery put in place to empower the trained entrepreneurs. A flexible and
enabling environment will go a long way to improve the quest for diversification.