THE INFLUENCE OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITIES ON YOUTHS’ ENGAGEMENT AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

ABSTRACT
Looking at the vast population and its high rate of growth, Nigeria and its
capacity as a country to accommodate the different aspirations of its
citizenry through the provision of gainful and optimal employment was
concluded as a mirage. It therefore became imperative to anatomize the
available resources and the concern of the government towards youth
economic independence through different avenues of positive
engagements given the recent involvement of Nigerian youths in one
regional security challenge or another. Literature and the different
secondary data gathered revealed that entrepreneurship is critical towards
ensuring a reasonable youth engagement that can sure lead to economic
development. Without contradictions, it was discovered that certain
restrictions and challenges also hinder the youth from being active and
successful in their enterprises, some of the challenges discovered were
multiple taxation, poor management skills, financially related issues,
insufficiency of business support infrastructures, and unstable
environmental policies among others. Consequently, the following
recommendations among others were made to ensure that youth
engagement is smoothly achieved as well as ensuring a significant
contribution of entrepreneurship to the development of the Nigerian
economy; the government should develop different statistical gathering
models to be able to ascertain the exact population of its citizenry in order
to enhance effective and holistic planning for the teaming populace. It was
also recommended that the available infrastructures should be boosted
and maintained by the government to motivate entrepreneurial activities,
meanwhile a strong emphasis was equally made concerning the multiple
taxation system. it was finally concluded that if these recommendations
are considered a good proportion of the unemployed would be engaged
and in turn would also contribute to the fast growth of the Nigerian
economy (Word count, 278).

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Unemployment, Youth Engagement,
Business Infrastructures, and Economic Development