On Thursday, a former Oyo State Assembly lawmaker, Hon. Seyi Adisa, said entrepreneurs are built with the potential to solve the nation’s challenges creatively.
Speaking at the ongoing 2024/2025 orientation programme of the University of Ibadan School of Business (UISB), Adisa says every country has peculiar challenges that can be solved creatively.
The ex-lawmaker, charging the students with entrepreneurial innovations and creativity, said that entrepreneurs live to overcome challenges by creating new thinking, systems, and approaches.
“That is what makes you an entrepreneur,” he said.
He said the students should not be interested in gathering knowledge only for the sake of knowledge; instead, they should step out and try and even prepare to fail, if need be.
“Nobody likes to fail, but it’s one of the requirements for success,” the former lawmaker said.
Hon. Adisa represented the Afijio constituency before serving as a Private Secretary to the late Gov. Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State.
He said the challenge for would-be entrepreneurs had always been to step out and apply the knowledge immediately.
Adisa reiterated the need to query things and challenge the status quo.
“Who said it cannot be done? Why can it not be done?
“This is so that we will start to have entrepreneurs willing to challenge the status quo.
“We don’t just have people who throw their hands in the air and say it’s impossible because we know the challenges are there.
“We don’t need to glorify the challenges any more than they are, but we need people who will come out of business schools and start collaborating, leverage networks and knowledge to create solutions,” Adisa said.
He emphasised the need for entrepreneurial mindsets that would make the school’s graduates challenge the system.
“The system has made us very employee-minded. So, we follow, we comply, we don’t disrupt, and we don’t query.
“Like I said, even when we ‘Japa’, we still have an employee mindset because it’s how we were trained.
“So, what we must do is to start to question things and be different, helping the younger generation who are trying to be more creative by giving them the platform to create as well as supporting them,” he said.
Adisa, the founder of the African Governance Institute for Development, urged the students not to let the system confine them.
“The system will tell you there’s no light. The system will tell you there’s no this and that, but you must find a way past that.
“There will be problems, capital, everything we all know.
“However, if we start to think of how to look for solutions, crowdfunding, whatever the problem is, I guarantee you, there are solutions if we look deep enough to find them,” Adisa said.
Meanwhile, the immediate past Dean of UISB, Prof. Adeolu Adewuyi, enjoined the students to live up to their responsibilities and make the school proud.
He underscored the need to follow the school’s guidelines and regulations to excel in their chosen programmes.
