Ndokwa Reporters encountered Prof. Pat Utomi in Warri during a youth empowerment program put together by the Impact Place Warri. In this interview, Prof. Utomi spoke on the Nigerian economy, the Nigerian educational system, the need to be developed an entrepreneurship economy and the effect of resource to the people.
Ndokwa Reporters:- How the Idea of Entrepreneurship Started.
Prof. Utomi : – It started when I was in graduate school. As a post graduate student in America, I became very sensitive to the struggle to define what will lead to the most progress in developing countries. Even in my career choice, if you look, I had degree in several disciplines. When I first left the University of Nigeria and my general motivation was to be something like what Balosconi was, a Media Entrepreneur, getting an MBA in media degree. When the Director of African University at Indiana University, a south African called Patrick Omeria said to me one day, and said look, Nigerians get so many MBA’S because you people like making money or something like that. The problem with your country is that it is badly run. If a few good people like you could take a policy development training background, and go back to your country, you could change your country for good that, can lead the country to economic progress. That was what led me to public finance and political science. My emphasis went to policy economics, in public finance and political economic environment business.
When I returned to Nigeria, my dilemma was compounded further by the fact that my ambition when I was coming back was to become director of budget or adviser on budget. But by the time I came back things moved faster than I taught, that within six months of my return I was already being offered a presidential adviser Portfolio. Fortunately or unfortunately, not too long there was a coup de ta, and I returned to the private sector. All those quick experiences began to make me wonder our development, good public policy, good spirit of enterprise, elite discipline, all of these issues, somewhere along the line, I came to a very strong realization that unless the next generation is given to wealth creation, we will all be struggling to share the burden from oil which is a diminishing assets, until we will become blue in the face with embarrassment when oil prices will crash or reach peak oil. So I began to think of how I can encourage young people to become more entrepreneurial.
When I left the Industry and became part of the founding member of Lagos Business School, it was clear to me that Entrepreneurship training was key to where Nigerians was going and this brought conflicts between me and my colleagues, that the school should be that of general management education. This was to make up for what Nigerians were going to Harvard and other schools to obtain degrees. That was the goal. That was the strategic of the Lagos Business School (LBS) and it was fine. But I kept telling them that we need an entrepreneuring mind set to build a thriving economy. So this argument continued when I went to spend little time abroad in 1996. One of those places I visited during that period was engaging in talk with Paul Wharton. Paul Wharton is a business club in University of Pennsylvania, a world, famous, but particularly famous as a finance institution. But Wharton had a centre called the Soul Snydr Centre for entrepreneurship and the fellow who was directing it incidentally happen to be South African E. N. McMillian. The Dean at Wharton introduced me to him and I looked at the work that they were doing for the local, who are all serious business men , even though their main Strategy was global finance and I said look we have a social responsibility to help small business people to create an enterprise culture. So when I came back intensified my holy quarrelling with my colleagues and eventually they buckled and we started what is called the Centre for Entrepreneurship Study at the Lagos Business School. Even before the CES, now EDC was created I designed and taught entrepreneurship program at the business School, for the first ten years of Lagos Business School. The more I did that the more I found out how entrepreneur thinking and Education was for development of any society. That is how closely I came to entrepreneurship development and teaching.
Ndokwa Reporter: And with your observation so far had you achieved your Entrepreneurship development policy?
Prof. Utomi:- This is hard to measure. Many people who listen to me speak are affected in many different ways and do many different things. May be in future someone will do an academic which will look into impact on what I had struggled to do through the years. One thing I know is that many of my Business students established businesses and had invited me to rather be chairman of their companies or something. I have seen several of them become truly very successful, gone to the stock market, just name it, for example one of such success is Franca Igbogwu, as editor of Vanguard, when she was removed and was thinking of how to try some printing press to be printing calendar, the push resulted in a concept that people say will not work, which was the formation of the newspaper called “Business Day”, which today is agreed by most people as the best newspaper published in Nigeria. That is just one; there are so many more in various area.
Again, that Nigeria is on the Internet today is because of that same drive. The coming and formation of the first ISP in Nigeria, Linkserve was because of such encounter. I co-foundered Linkserve with Chima Oyekwele with such drive.
Ndokwa Reporters:- As a professor, a co-founder of Pan African University, can we say the Nigeria educational system is fallen, and thinking of entrepreneurship, in our educational Curriculun?
Prof. Utomi:- There are many ways our educational system is challenged. Lack of Progress in different areas. For example, many of the universities have old stock professors of high quality academicians. But then remember that in time these lecturers will begin to get tired to lecture. With limited resources they don’t regenerate themselves. For example in Lagos Business School we have a policy that every Faculty member must himself or herself attend a training program somewhere in the world every year. Because if you don’t learn from others basically, you we begin to regenerate. We had a clear budget for that; there are many university things who had not been to a seminar for a whole year.
Honestly at the government universities, government policies has focused more on quantity and not quality. They had not budgeted enough for research, for formal and those kind of things that make up for higher performing academic conditions because of this, there many challenges in Nigeria Universities. But a few of the Private Universities has been more focused, they had done very well. They may not have as many as those quality professors as like University of Ibadan, University of Nigerian and co, but they may have remarkable up-coming lecturers and resources because they earn good salary from fees to develop the environment for learning. The Pan Atlantic University (Formal Pan African) can through those processes started as Lagos Business School and now into Media and Communication and it is ready to do other things.
Ndokwa Reporters:- With the argument that a graduate from Nigerian University do not meet up with the standard, what can be done, relating to continuous seed of Job?
Prof. Utomi:- This is a matter of Curriculum development. This will involve the training of people who will create value in the economy. Entrepreneur Education involves the creation of different institutions that have a different curriculum. This need to changes I think NUC for example had realized this for two year or so, NUC through Vice Chancellors had invited me to give them a talk. After that Professor Amali, of Ilorin after the talk was so excited that he asked me to come down to Ilorin to talk to the students. However I had worked with University of Ibadan to establish an Entrepreneurship Centre and I was a member of the Board.
Ndokwa Reporters: How then can Nigeria key into this especially the Youths, that there is wealth outside oil?
Prof. Utomi:- Sometimes we develop an entitlement mentality from Natural resources, which is a very dangerous thing. This is called resources cause Problem. The World Bank in 1995 which shows that resource poor development countries are actually out performing few resources rich countries. This is because all energy used to fight on how to share the natural resources booty all result to civil War. But the greatest gift is the human mind. You can create wealth like Japan. The youths of our country need to know that anything you can dream you can make wealth out of it. This will lead to wealth.
