According to Chrisman’s (1984) concept of ‘development.’ as a process of societal advancement, where improvement in the wellbeing of people is generated through strong partnerships between all sectors, corporate bodies and other groups in the society.
Besides, Ekpeme (2016, p. 480) says: development, regardless of how it is defined, generally details an attempt to build “a better and a virile society” that is characterized by significant physical improvements in the people’s capacity to understand and to tap the resources of their environments for their own good and the good of mankind; it also entails new opportunities for personal and collective uplift and advancement of a man.
To this end, we can submit that national development is the overall development or a collective socio-economic, political, religious as well as linguistic advancement of a country or nation. And, the pride of any government is the attainment of higher value level of development in such a way that its citizens would derive natural attachment to governance through the pillars of development.
Meanwhile, Asiyanbola (2016, p. 119) highlights the pillars of national development and modernisation to be: education, government, economy, health, agriculture, science and technology.
We must realize that we are considering a two-sided topic. And of which, the first side has been unveiled in the earlier paragraphs. Hence, we shall discuss the concept of entrepreneur(ship) and its essentials.
Accordingly, an entrepreneur is one who creates a new business in the face of risk and uncertainty with a view to achieving profit and growth in the identification of substantial opportunities and assemblage of the necessary resources to maximize them. Significantly, entrepreneurs act on their ideas unlike other people who come up with great business ideas but never act on it. We can therefore suggest ‘entrepreneurship’ to be the act of risk-taking for profit in business. Of course, there are challenges to entrepreneurship. Nonetheless, essentials of entrepreneurship especially in the development of a nation cannot be undermined.
Without gainsaying, entrepreneurship improves the economy of a nation. Discussing further, the economy of a nation is boosted because locally-made goods and agricultural farm produce are being exported to generate foreign currencies. This boosts economic strength and foreign connects of the goods-exporting country.
Consequently, entrepreneurship adds to national income. The new products or services created by entrepreneurs result in new wealth from the new markets. And, higher earnings from entrepreneurship boost national income. This is achieved in the form of tax revenue remitted into the government’s nation account.
Not only that, entrepreneurship provides employment opportunities. A reason why individuals tend to become entrepreneurs is because they are unable to find suitable jobs.
Thus, people who could not find job created one for themselves and then employed some others, whether skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled to work for them. As such, different people can be employed in professions like: tailoring, shoe making, catering, carpentry etc. When people are engaged, they will not be idle. Hence, employment reduces crime rate.
Also, it is worthy of mention that entrepreneurship maximizes the price of market goods and services. Entrepreneurs challenge existing firms to become more competitive. This is because entrepreneurs often enter the market with lower prices and greater product variety. This method is adopted by young and new entrepreneurs so that the company’s operation will improve. Increased competition in an economy is advantageous because firms and individuals will source methods to improve their modus operandi.
Moreover, entrepreneurship as one of the tools for National development, introduces innovative technologies. This means that individuals resort to entrepreneurship to provide niche solutions or use their creativity, technological knowledge to generate their income. Innovative ideas are functional driving factors for entrepreneurs which result in great contribution to national development.
