By Dayo Adesulu

Educators and entrepreneural experts have come out with solutions to the dearth of entrepreneurship and leadership bedeviling developing countries of the world. This exposition is contained in a book titled, ‘Leadership and Entrepreneurship Series’ slated for launch on 29th August, at Protea, Ikeja.

Speaking at a pre-launch conference in Lagos, one of the writers of the two-in-one book, Mr Dipo Ojedeji said: “The future of any nation depends on the ability to build the future generation of leaders and entrepreneurs, adding, “entrepreneurs and leaders combine to determine a nation’s sustainability.”

He said that like many other developing nations of the world, Nigeria is facing the challenge of leadership and entrepreneurship to assist it meet emerging and future challenges.

Ojedeji said: “The noblest responsibility we have is to increase the value of our youths, not only in the quality of their formal education but, in the infusion of qualitative skills that will boost their professional and personal growth.”

According to him, when properly inspired, these young adults will learn skills that will make them act ethically and exhibit responsible behavior.

To revamped the system, he said their commitment is to deliver a curriculum with books, webpages and other resources that will meet the global standard.

He said: “The Leadership and Entrepreneurship Series (LESs) is to prepare today’s young adults in our public and private secondary schools all over the nation for an advantage in individual and group leadership responsibilities of our country in tomorrow’s competitive world.”

He said with the book, our nation will from telling our children they are leaders of tomorrow to actually preparing them to be leaders of tomorrow.

He said the objectives of LESs curriculum and activities are: “To develop in every secondary school student an awareness of his or her own leadership and entrepreneurship potentials.

“To assist these young adults in building essential leadership skills and entrepreneurship qualities that will enable them act with integrity and high sense of responsibility in all aspects of their lives.

“To make them citizens who possess the leadership abilities to meet present and future challenges in the emerging competitive global society.

“To provide these students with opportunities to begin to practice these essential leadership and entrepreneurship skills within a knowledge-based environment.

Speaking on the uniqueness of the book, he lamented that more than 80% of secondary schools in Nigeria do not have any programme on leadership apart from what the curriculum provides for in Citizenship or Civics. The curriculum, he noted treats the few leadership topics as an academic exercise which he said makes it ineffective. To him, leadership is built by daily practice and habits, adding, “This is addressed in the LESs solution.”

He decried also that in many schools entrepreneurship is treated as just producing products and selling through an emotional captive market consisting of parents. He explained that apart from the great work being done by some few organisations like Junior Achievement of Nigeria, the present exposition of entrepreneurship at this level does not deal with Passion, Innovation, Need Identification, Customer Management, Marketing, Money Management and People Management. “These are concepts and principles that LESs is designed to impart and build,” he said.

While explaining the strategy to achieving these, he pointed out that the LESs programme is a total solution designed to prepare today’s young adults in our public and private secondary schools all over the nation for an advantage in leadership and entrepreneurship responsibilities of our country in tomorrow’s competitive world.

He said: “The scope of this well planned curriculum includes five books relevant for the first five year levels in the Junior and Senior Secondary Schools. “These series have seventeen chapters each, totally looking at 18 leadership characters and five qualities of successful entrepreneurs.

“At the end of each chapter is the highlight of a vital section or sub-section of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with brief legal interpretation.

Our belief is that a good knowledge of the Constitution is imperative for anyone who wants to become a leader in the nation.

“The LESs contributors and educators also built instructional activities and resources into each chapter in order to allow the students practice leadership and entrepreneurship skills after learning the concepts and theories through presentations and instructions.

“The activity page has a group class activity that comes immediately after the teacher’s presentation.

This is to ensure the teaching becomes part of the students. A group project is given towards the next class for presentation and discussion.

“The third item on the activity page is the individual assignment. The intention is to replace the assessment by examination with a continuous assessment plan that will test the assimilation and understanding of the students.”

For the adults who will teach this curriculum, the writers expect them to support the young adults by drawing out their latent leadership skills and entrepreneurship qualities.

He said the teacher should be a mentor and role model who will reach out to their hearts and coach them to develop these skills and, invest time in bringing out the intended outcomes.

To achieve the above, he said: “We have provided presentation slides and other tutoring resources, accessible from the teachers’ menu on our website for the benefit of educators and trainers of our partner institutions and governments.

“We will run periodic train-the-trainer sessions for these educators where we teach them to use the resource materials.

“Teachers on the LESs programme also have networking opportunities to compare notes on the progress being made and their challenges in developing these young adults.

“Students and young adults all over the nation also have access to share ideas, network, and watch videos of local and international presentations on leadership and entrepreneurship through the students and LESs club menus on our website.

Our LESs blog provides additional opportunity for them to practice or read more on leadership and entrepreneurship activities and case studies.

“We shall hold annual leadership and entrepreneurship events and competitions where winners of the best entrepreneurship ideas from the six geo-political regions will be given funds to implement the ideas.

“The graphics team has also ensured that we produce a book that is appealing to the eyes with light colours and pictures that will give spice to the learning session.

The intention is that any young adult that picks any of the books will have a great time learning and enjoying a LESs experience.”