A group of young, aspiring entrepreneurs from mainly the South-South and South-East were recently empowered with strategic ideas that will help them excel in their businesses.
This was at a recent event tagged Young Entrepreneurs Conference: The CEO, held at Golden Tulip, Stadium Road, Port Harcourt.
Seasoned speakers, business executives, market strategists, brand experts, human resource managers and social media-preneurs took the participants on a variety of success-inspiring expositions, highlighting the essence of balance in success, family values, customer-relationship, sales consciousness, productive management of potentials, ideas or skills, promotion and marketing of brands via social media, among others.
In a chat with newsmen shortly after the conference, the organiser, Kingsley Asaba, said the vision was informed by the need to provide guidance and mentorship to youths aspiring to go into business.
“We’re gathering youths that needed to be mentored, youths that needed to be guided through their business. Many of them go into business without mentorship and it’s affecting their businesses. So, we felt ‘let us gather them in a place and take them through the journey of life through people who have succeeded to guide them on how to succeed in life’,” he said.
Asaba appealed to the government to invest in human capital development of the youths to make them productive enough to contribute to the economic growth of the country.
“The government should invest into human capital development. Government should put money into the growth of Nigerians. I just pray that government should come into this and support the Nigerian youths,” he said, adding that some of the participants operating small businesses would be supported with funds.
Earlier, one of the resource persons at the event, Chris Oarhe, a pastor, medical doctor and business expert, said for businesses to thrive in Nigeria, good policies, an enabling environment and financial resources are essential.
“The first thing I think we should get get right is to recognize the fact that there must be a steering away from pursuit of personal wealth to building public wealth. Whatever we do for our environment, the society, the community, the nation eventually will be the fertilizer for our own individual businesses. For businesses to thrive in Nigeria, provide policies that will encourage profitable business ventures and then provide resources to give leverage to young people,” Oarhe said.
One of the participants, Eze Ngozi, described the program as amazing and helpful.
She added: “It’s actually helpful because today, a particular point which I am in my life right now, someone else is at that same point. The person asked a question and I got an answer on what I should do.”
Other resource persons at the event were: Thelma Oki, K.O. Baba, Patrick Uduma, Gabriel Appah and Chinedu Ifechelobi.
