Dr Oyekemi Oyelola, an expert in entrepreneurship development, on Wednesday, said that the acquisition of entrepreneurial skills by students was the solution to the growing graduate unemployment in the country.

Oyelola, the Director, Centre for Entrepreneurship Development, Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, said that the unemployment trend must be reversed to avert national crisis. She noted that many graduates remained unemployed because they lacked entrepreneurial skills to be self-employed.

According to her, this consequently resulted in many of them waiting for paid employments which are unavailable. “Through robust entrepreneurship development education, students will be kitted with the necessary entrepreneurial skills that will make them employers of labour, rather than job-seekers,’’” Oyelola said. She commended the Federal Government for the recent introduction of entrepreneurship studies into the curriculum of tertiary institutions, saying the move would enhance the nation‘s human capital development.

Oyelola advised that apart from promoting entrepreneurship education in schools, the government should also focus on infrastructural development. She also urged the government to tackle the issue of multiple taxations, explaining that it threatened the development of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs). Oyelola said that 7000 students and staff of YABATECH had benefited from the various entrepreneurship programmes offered by centre. The director said that the objective of the centre was to promote self-reliance.