There is no country in the modern world where an
improvement in the material level of living is not regarded as a desirable goal
by rulers and citizens alike. The growing acceptance of the need to do
something for the poor, can be noticed in the numerous poverty alleviation
programmes in Nigeria, the average Nigerian still lives subsist below the
absolute poverty line. Amongst the challenges that confront Nigeria, a major
contributory factor was the style and expectations of the development strategy
that was pursued and faced with this failure; the need for a meaningful
national development is not only necessary but also imperative. To this end, a
lot of economic reform programmes or strategies have evolved but recently
special emphasis is being made on self-reliance via entrepreneur and its
numerous small and medium enterprises. The economic success of the countries of
south east, Asia, and America is traceable to the contributions made by
self-reliant individuals (entrepreneurs), through their numerous small medium
development depend on the entrepreneur who makes a living by creating new
business new jobs and new ideas. Entrepreneur means different things to
different people. In other to appreciate this study more, some concepts that
are associated with this study will be explained.According to Oxford advanced
Learner’s dictionary it defines entrepreneur as a person who starts or
organizes a commercial enterprises, especially one involving financial risk. To
an economist, entrepreneur is one who brings resources, labour, materials and
other assets into combination that make their value greater than before and who
introduce changes, innovations and a new order. Entrepreneurs are the risk
takers who create businesses; they assemble all the factors of production in an
effort to start and operate a business and to make a profit. For Schumpeter
“the whole process of economic change hung ultimately on the person who makes
it happen–the entrepreneurs”. Entrepreneurship involves combining to initiate
changes in production hence it is essentially the promotion of economic change,
it is a process involving the entrepreneur and an entrepreneurial career.
Hirsch and Peters in their text entitled entrepreneurship: describes this
process as one of creating something difficult with value by devoting the
necessary time and assuming the accompanying financial, psychic and social
risks and receiving the resulting, the rewards of monetary and personal
satisfaction. In Nigeria, many policies are constantly being implemented to
ensure their survival which will in turn enable them contribute maximally to
economic development but there challenges were intensified more by the perennial
energy crisis, weak infrastructure, poor import and export policies, tariff
structure among others, which have prevailed in the country for some time now.
These have, inevitably led to the near collapse and failure of the small scale
enterprises. The government of this country should look into the modalities of
solving these challenges. It is therefore against this background that this
work sets out to evaluate entrepreneurship development in Lafia Metropolis,
Nassarawa State, considering some small scale enterprises.