Entrepreneurship Unit
Professor Wilberforce Oti
Director
Unit Brief Information
You are welcome to Entrepreneurship Development Centre of Evangel University, Akaeze where our team is not just made up of astute lecturers that teach students but passionate Life Coaches, Business Mentors, Experienced Entrepreneurs who are saddled with the awesome responsibility to raise a generation of young graduates with entrepreneurial mindset designed to identify opportunities, capture value via design thinking, nurture a thriving ecosystem and ultimately create wealth.
Our Entrepreneurship curriculum in tandem with National University Commission focuses on spotting gaps, studying the gap and filling them and in the process employing team members for wealth creation. Creativity and management of innovation; Opportunity identification; Design thinking; Mentorship; Purpose and Passion discovery; Business Ethics; Team work; Problem solving; Risk evaluation; Business communication; Nigerian business environment; Intrapreneurship; Digital opportunities and Technological entrepreneurship such as e-commerce among others are all part of our curriculum.
This becomes very expedient as the rate of unemployment today stands at 35% in Nigeria. Our model of entrepreneurship education focuses on equipping our young men and women with entrepreneurial mindset, attitude and competencies who will create employment opportunities, improved standard of living of team members and bring about national transformation through increased Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of our Nation. Our students’ mantra is simply “we are not job hunters; we are job creators!”
In Entrepreneurship Development Centre of Evangel University, Akaeze, our duties also include encouraging researchers to focus in their immediate environment and provide solutions to numerous challenges faced by the people. We assist researchers to translate their research ideas into commercial opportunity and bring them into market. We also train our other lecturers to integrate Entrepreneurship mindset in all the courses and disciplines offered in our universities.
Outside the university environment, our team is poised to help young entrepreneurs to curb the mortality rate of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Currently the mortality rate of SMEs is 80% within 5 years of its existence. We therefore offer a hand-holding and mentoring certificate program to our other entrepreneurs (non-students) within our space of influence.
More importantly we synergize with other successful entrepreneurs in our hand-holding mentorship program for start-ups. And above all, we facilitate the development of a thriving ecosystem and handshakes among the key Entrepreneurial Players such as Small and Medium Enterprises Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Bank of Industry (BOI) and other stakeholders. Our goal is to be among the foremost innovation hub and one-stop centre for the SMEs in accessing Government services and for young entrepreneurs in Nigeria Tertiary institution.