A statement said the centre said this at its Thanksgiving mass service to celebrate 20 years of EDC existence.
The Director, EDC-PAU, Nneka Okekearu, said that “It is the 20th anniversary Enterprise Development Centre of the Pan-Atlantic University and over the years, we have been committed to building a network of entrepreneurial leaders through continuous learning, process improvement, and business integrity.”
She noted that EDC in the last 20 years, had impacted on more than a million Nigerians’ lives.
“EDC starts with a flagship programme called ‘Certificate in Entrepreneurship Management’, the course is a programme that takes entrepreneurs through all the areas they need to know so they can run better businesses that end up being sustainable,” she said.
She explained that the programme, which started in 2003, had 56 set in Lagos and on 30th set in Abuja.
According to her, all these people that had been on the programme, a lot of entrepreneurs had become industry leaders and were doing things affecting the ecosystem.
The centre, she stated, was having entrepreneurs that wanted to deepen the ecosystem, forming different platforms whereby they could now groom other Nigerians to set up businesses in boosting the economy.
She said, “We have entrepreneurs who have come here and grown their businesses from an annual turnover of N1m, N2m and within two to three years they are doing double digits annual turnover and more.
“As they grow their revenue, they employ more people as this helped in reducing unemployment and for every recruitment, it has a ripple effect on the economy.”
On the coming in of the new government, Okekearu called for a better enabling environment for businesses to thrive.
According to her, “What entrepreneurs require is enabling environment. So once that enabling environment is there, there will not be multiplicity of taxes.
“Our hope is that the incoming government will take that into consideration because once there is an enabling environment, businesses will thrive and this will lead to increase in employment, produce more goods and services and pay taxes.”
She also added that “infrastructure should be invested in, like having manufacturing clusters in each sector, as entrepreneurs do not have to spend so much of their capital to buy machineries, all they have to do is go there and just pay for time and manufacture.”
Listing the problem of businesses, she said “Most entrepreneurs do not have the right structures and systems in place. The second problem they have is access to the market and what we do is to provide them platform so that they can have access to markets to sell.
Also, the Regional Vicar of Opus Dei/ Chancellor Pan Atlantic University, the Rev Fr Anthony Odoh, said that EDC in the last 20 years, had helped to boost the economy of Nigeria.
