Poverty Reduction in Nigeria: The Role of Entrepreneurship Education

Poverty still remains a development issue that continues to capture the attention of the policy makers and international donor agencies. Nigeria is in a terrible paradox. The poverty appears as a contradiction considering the country‟s immense wealth. The situation has also worsened despite the huge human and material resources that have been devoted to poverty reduction by the past and present governments. The paper discovered that there is no any reasonable success achieved so far. Almost all the poverty reduction strategies implemented so far have failed. There seems to be widespread recognition that entrepreneurship is the engine driving the economy and society of most nations by creating new industries, employment and wealth. It has also been argued that new venture creation holds the key to economic growth and development of a nation. The relevance of entrepreneurship education as an effective strategy for poverty reduction and employment creation was highlighted. Recent studies indicated that entrepreneurship education encourages the growth of new businesses, promotion of improved decision-making skills and the increase in technology transfer between education establishments and the market place. It is therefore recommended that entrepreneurship development programmes and other policy measures should be more vigorously pursued by government in order to accelerate economic growth and development as well as effective means of jobs creation, new ventures development and consequently poverty reduction.