By Olusegun Obisanya
As several industry players converge to train young aspiring entrepreneurs at ‘The Leverage Conference (TLC) 1.0’, United Nations and IAWPA Ambassador for Girls/Women Speak, who also doubles as a National Award Winner for Fashion Tech, and CEO of Bukola Nevile Ltd, Ambassador Adebukola Adeogun has decried the negative effects of exorbitant electricity bills on businesses in the state.
Adebukola, the convener and Facilitator of the TLC 1.0, themed: ‘Maximizing your potential: The power of leverage’ held in Lagos recently examined the major challenge of outrageous electricity bills for nano, SME and MSME business owners in Nigeria.
She thereby appealed appealed to the government to look into the bill if they really want entrepreneurs to be fruitful, thrive, expand and create employment.
She said, “If there’s anything that has ever impacted my life the most, it must be the fact that I always leverage on opportunities.”
She noted that the conference is born from her passion to help youth see opportunities in whatever field they find themselves in. Adebukola stressed that the government is doing amazingly well and that she likes their pursuits for more digital literacy amongst youth.
“There are a lot of free skill acquisition programs out there, it is now left to the youths to leverage the opportunities as we are training them to.
“We as business owners also play our parts of CSR, we owe it a duty to give back to the communities where we run our businesses. Therefore, as the founder of Bukola Neville Ltd and fabric threads recycling Ltd, we run our CSR quarterly empowering over five thousand women. Although, we also want to make it a monthly empowerment program seeing that we recently wrapped up a training project partnership with Access Bank, where we trained thirty-three women in fashion designing, many have leveraged and will still leverage these opportunities.
“The most important thing is to take these opportunities to the rural areas to those who really need it, which will be able to ignite the entrepreneurial spirit in our youths.” she said.
However, being a fashion expert Adebukola expressed her expectations in respect to the newly crowned ‘Miss Universe’ saying she used to work in the beauty and modeling industry, hence the emerging winner must be an ambassador, a tourist, and promote Nigeria’s ethnicity in the global space. “I want someone who is dedicated, highly intellectual, a humanitarian, strong willed, compassionate, hardworking and someone who is passionate about empowerment, empowering the girl child, women, widows, persons living with disabilities (PWDs), and vulnerable persons.
She urged the youths to create their goals and visions, look out for good mentors who can help them leverage opportunities, endeavour to lead profitable and valuable conversations on social media, rather than wasting valuable time online and learn to network, Leveraging on people’s name, influence and visibility.
Meanwhile, the keynote speaker, a consultant for state, private/public sector, an academia and founder of Braceup The Young Academy (BTY), an NGO for youths, Obasanjo Fajemirokun, expressed his disapproval over the mandate that candidates below the age of 18 should not be allowed to sit for WAEC/WASSCE, he stated that this will make Nigerian students unable to compete globally as there are age limits for certain jobs and platforms for one to leverage opportunities. “I feel it’s not a good initiative and there wasn’t adequate consultation in this regard,” he lamented.
Pinpointing some of the major challenges facing education, he highlighted low financing from the government, saying many educational structures are in bad shape as well as having low teacher motivations in the sector which is a major challenge.
He said, “We have the Nigerian student loans but we are still trying to observe the disbursement and see how it can affect the education sector. We also need scholarships for Nigerian students in Nigerian schools. This will help students afford and access quality education.
“As Humanitarians, few of our achievements have been to empower girls particularly through our Edu-girls Nigeria project where we use football as a catalyst to change the way girls feel in school and improve their self-esteem, self-confidence and academic rates. We have also done the BTY Better school which has been to provide quality education, through the renovation of five classrooms in two schools, a private and public in Ilaro and Ota, which serve about 200 children annually.”
Executive Director, Africa Bridge initiative, Mr Opeoluwa Taiwo, explained, “We all know that Business is life and a major industry that impacts the economy. The 21st century needs a lot of thriving SMEs especially in Nigeria. As an NGO leader, I believe the end point of every business is impact, so we have come to harness our knowledge, resources and ideas to create impacts as the theme stipulates; in the area of developing impacts in business, make impacts in our economy, the society, our families and Nigeria at lar
