Perception of Colllege of Education Lecturers on Identification of Sectorial Business Opportunities in Entrepreneurship Development as Panacea for National Economic Transformation.

Abstract

The fundamentals of business opportunities identification are directly related to the entire process of entrepreneurship development for national economic transformation. There is abundance of business opportunities in the different sectors of the national economy yearning for exploitation. The purpose of the study was to identify these various sectors and determine the extent to which the identified business opportunities promote entrepreneurship development for national transformation. Two research questions guided the study. The population was 45 lecturers of the School of Business Education from nine Colleges of Education in the South East of Nigeria.  A structured questionnaire with a five-point Likert Scale was used as the instrument for data collection. The instrument contained 28 items and mean was used in the analysis of the data. The findings showed that business opportunities exist in different sectors of the national economy and that these opportunities promote entrepreneurship culture and development, job creation, self-employment, self-reliance, economic transformation, creativity and innovation. They also provide the push, pull and drive for hard work that ensure success and the acquisition of employable skills for the unemployed, unemployable and the underemployed, thus leading to national transformation. Conclusions were drawn based on these findings. It was recommended that entrepreneurship curriculum in tertiary institutions should include how to identify the fundamentals of business opportunities and ways and means of identifying business opportunities in one’s environment.

Keywords: Sectors, Sectorial Business Opportunities, National Economic Transformation, Entrepreneurship Development, Entrepreneur,