ABSTRACT
Entrepreneurship is a burgeoning global phenomenon (Higher Colleges of Technology 2010), and the entrepreneur has been described as the single most important player in the modern economy (Lazear 2002). Equally, entrepreneurship is frequently pinpointed as the most effective way for those without much experience or political clout to engage in their country’s economic development (CIPE 2010). Consequently, within the last decades, entrepreneurship has ascended to the centre stage in the public policy arena of most countries (Reynolds et al. 1999). On the other hand, public expenditure and poverty issues have occupied frontline position in Nigeria’s quest for development (Akpan 2007). Unfortunately, the language of “poverty reduction” itself has done more harm than good, for it has laid emphasis on short-term interventions such as relief efforts at the expense of long-term competence-building programs that raise economic productivity and expand opportunities for wider access to productive assets (Juma 2007).
