ABSTRACT
This work examines sport administration and entrepreneur cause in changing economy in Nigeria. This work looks at sport administration in Nigeria and also sees entrepreneurship as the process of creating something new with value by devoting the necessary time and effort, with the accompanying financial and social risks, and receiving in return monetary rewards, personal satisfaction and independence. In this era of shrinking economic activities, government should endeavour to provide the necessary infrastructures required for skills acquisition among its citizenry. This is because without technological skills, entrepreneurial spirit which drives economic development through job creation will be lacking. The work conclude that entrepreneurship is essential for rapid and sustained economic growth but there is urgent need to change the mindset of the average Nigerian especially the youths towards embracing self employment and de-emphasize the search for white collar jobs that are non-existent. Entrepreneurship as a means of self employment suffers a number of great challenges”, and these challenges are what this research work would identify.
SPORT ADMINISTRATION AND ENTREPRENUER CAUSE IN CHANGING ECONOMY IN NIGERIA.
INTRODUCTION
Sports administration is a varied field that encompasses everything from professional and collegiate athletics to facilities management and municipal recreation programs. Sports administrators help to ensure the smooth running of a sports organisation, which may range from reception work at a local sports club to marketing or human resources at a major sports club. There are also opportunities in sports funding bodies and local authority sports development.The prosperity and progress of a nation depends on the quality of its people. If they are enterprising, ambitious and courageous enough to bear the risk, the community/society will develop quickly. Such people are identified as entrepreneurs and their character reflects entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is no monopoly of any religion or community, Business Timus (1995) entrepreneurial potential can be found and developed anywhere irrespective of age, qualification, experience or socio-economic background, only efforts are required in the right direction. Entrepreneurship may not be regarded as a sufficient condition for growth activity but is surely a necessary condition. (Destipande 1984) hence it must be given top priority in the national programmes of a country. It is widely acknowledged in entrepreneurship literature that entrepreneurship is about people who realize new opportunities. Entreprenuers are persistent, passionate, adaptable and able to take risks. As a result entrepreenuership can occur in a range of environments. However, at the core of entreprenership lies the creation of new business ventures by individuals or teams. Timmons, (1999).
Enterpreneurship is the lifeblood of the Nigerian economy. It is the cradle of job and weath creation in the most innovative ways. It is therefore imperative that we recognised an contribution that the entreprenuer makes to our economy and development.
A small business unit, is, thus an enterprise, its owner, an entrepreneur and his activities are the entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is a human activity development. It indicates to the spirit of enterprise such as spirit transforms the man from a nomad to a cattle rearer, to a settled agriculturist, to a trader and an industrialist. Murthy (1989).
LITERATURE REVIEW:
SPORT ADMINISTRATION CAUSE IN CHANGING ECONOMY IN NIGERIA.
Nigerian sports, though always exercised, were noted first in the 1950s. Nigeria had it’s first appearance in the Helsinki Olympic Games in 1952, and it’s first victory in 1954, when Emmanuel Ifeanjuna won a gold medal in the high jump at the Commonwealth games in Cardiff. In 1962, the Nationals Sports Council was set up, In terms of football/soccer, the Nigerian Football Federation was created in 1945. It was the first year that a competition was organized bringing together clubs from Lagos, Port Harcourt and Calabar. The championship was also renamed the Challenge Cup replacing the Governor’s Cup as it had been known under their British colonizers. It was only several years later that the Challenge Cup became a national trophy when other top clubs from different provinces were invited to play. However, the clubs had to wait till 1990 for the professional league to be introduced.
Nigeria emerged on the international football/soccer scene in 1960 when it first entered the World Cup, but failed to qualify for the finals. It eventually qualified for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. The Nigerian National League began in 1972 when five teams entered the league. This grew to 12 teams by 1978. The victories Nigeria has won are stated in the records section below. Locally within Nigeria, there are many sporting clubs that one can join.
Sports Played in Nigeria includes;
Athletics (track and field), Badminton, Basketball, Baseball, Boxing, Chess, Cricket, Cycling, Football (most popular sport in Nigeria), Gymnastics, Golf, Handball, Hockey, Judo, Lawn Tennis, Rowing, Shooting, Squash rackets, Swimming, Table Tennis / Ping-Pong, Taekwondo, Volleyball, Weight-lifting and Wrestling
Nigerians, especially its sports officials and administrators to whom responsibility has been entrusted to, have always done harm to the development of the nation’s sporting institutions rather than the otherwise. If the national sporting leaders don’t take cues from the sporting programmes of the Americans and Chinese, then the sporting prowess, talents and passion for which the black race is known for may slowly ebb out of the country.
The performance of Nigerian athletes in the London 2012 Olympics game was a revealer of sorts and the point which glaringly proves that you reap only what you sow was evidently portrayed by Team Nigeria Athletes. Nigerian sorts have continue to nose dive due to corruption of officials in the sporting area.
ENTREPRENUER CAUSE IN CHANGING ECONOMY IN NIGERIA.
An entrepreneur is a person while entrepreneurship is the process of its actual working. Entrepreneurship is also consistently equated with the establishment and management of small business enterprises. In United States, the entrepreneur is often defined as one who starts his own, new and small business. (Drucker 1985).
Modern literature on economic development classifies the entrepreneurship in four broad categories. The innovating, The imitating, The Fabian and The drone entrepreneurship (Williamson and Bultrick 1969). Innovating and imitating entrepreneurship is generally available in developed countries and very rare and limited in developing countries. Developing countries have in them the Fabian and Drone types of entrepreneurship.
The reason of the backwardness of the developing countries lies in the fact that they are deficient in innovating and imitating entrepreneurs whereas they are found in abundance in developed countries. Entrepreneurship has been a major factor in the economic growth of the west, the USSR and of Japan in Asia and it was undoubtedly of innovating and imitating type which made the process of development smooth and fast there. This bring to mine an area of interest that has captured the imagination of scholars regarding the phenomenon of entrepreneurship is the big question, “Are entrepreneurs born or made”. Many people believe that entrepreneurs possess innatic, genetic talents. However, experts generally agree that most entrepreneurs were not born, rather, it is the environment, traning family tradition etc which help in the development of successful entrepreneurs (Jha,1989).
The Concept of Enterpreneurship
The whole idea about entrepreneurship is about self-employment which will generate employment opportunities to other that must work with him as he cannot work alone. Entrepreneurship is the most effective method for bridging the gap between science and the market place, creating new enterprises, and bringing new products and service to the market. These entrepreneurial activities significantly affect the economy of an area (Nig) by building the economic base and providing jobs.
According to Peter Drucker (1970) and K. knight (1967), entrepreneurship is about taking a risk; it is the process of creating new values that did not previously exist; it is the practice of starting new organization, especially new business; it involves creation of new wealth through implementation of new concepts. Drucker (1970) believes that what entrepreneurs have in common is not personality traits but a commitment to innovation. For innovation to occur the entrepreneur must have not only talent, ingenuity and knowledge but he must also be hard working, focused and purposeful.
Howard defines entrepreneurship as the pursuit of opportunities without regard to resources currently controlled. To be enterprising is to keep yours eyes open and your mind active. It is to be skilled enough, confident enough, creative enough, and discipline enough to seize opportunities that present themselves regardless of the economy condition (Nwafor 2007).
Robert (1985) looked at entrepreneurship as the process of creating
something different with value by devoting the necessary time and effort, and social risk and receiving the rewards of monetary and personal satisfaction. Development in entrepreneurship is sometimes seen as arising from three sources, namely;
(i) From the contributions of economic writers and thinkers on the role of the entrepreneurs in economic development and the application of economic theory.
(ii) From the psychological trait approach on personality characteristics of the entrepreneurs and
(iii) From social behavioral approach which stresses the influence of
social environment as well as personality trait.
McGrath and Macmillan identified five characteristics of habitual
entrepreneurs:
(i) They passionately seek new opportunities, are alert, always seeking for the change to profit from change and disruption in the way business is done.
(ii) They pursue opportunities with economics discipline, are not only alert to spot opportunities but make sure they act on them.
(iii) They pursue only the very best opportunities and avoid chasing
after every option, are ruthlessly disciplined about limiting the number of projects they pursue and go after a tightly controlled portfolio of opportunities in different stages of development.
(iv) They focus specifically on adaptive execution, rather than analyzing new ideas to death, people with entrepreneurial mindset execute yet they are adaptive-able to change direction as the real opportunity and the best way to exploit it evolves.
(v) They engage the energies of everyone in their domain; involve many people, inside and outside the organization in the pursuit of an opportunity. They create and sustain networks of relationship rather than going alone, making the most of the intellectual and the
other resources people have to offer and helping those people achieve their goals too (Soyibo 2006).
According to Aruwa (2004), it is the ability of some people to accept risk and combine factors of production in order to produce goods and services. It can also be seen as the willingness and ability of an individual to seek out investment opportunities in an environment, and be able to establish and run an enterprise successfully based on the identified opportunities.
Entrepreneurship Opportunities in Nigeria Economy
Most good business opportunities do not suddenly appear, but rather result from an entrepreneur’s alertness to possibilities or, in some case, the establishment of mechanisms that identify potential opportunities. Most entrepreneurs do not have formal mechanisms for identifying business opportunities, some source are often fruitful. These include consumers and business associate, members of distribution system, and technical people. Often, consumer, such as business associates purchasing products to fit a certain lifestyle, is the best source of ideas for a new venture. Many business hare started as a result of complain about poor quality or high cost of the product or service by the consumers. Many other entrepreneurs have identified business opportunities through a discussion with a retailer, wholesaler, or manufacturer’s representative. Technically oriented individuals often conceptualize business opportunities when working on other projects. There are several entrepreneurship opportunities in Nigeria.
According to the Nigeria small and medium scale enterprises toolkit, developing a business idea is
A matter of creating a vision
Leveraging your strength and
Determining what the market needs.
From these three ideas you might begin to ask some question and the answers to those questions will pave way for you to start a business. The role played by entrepreneurship in the development of western countries has made the people of developing countries very much conscious of its importance in the programme of rapid economic development. People have begun to realize that for achieving the goal of development it is necessary to increase both the quantitative and qualitative entrepreneurship in the country. The qualitative entrepreneurship implies the stress on innovating and the quantitative implies the stress on imitating entrepreneurship. Both of them contribute stimulus for development. It is also known that even though a country has resources – labour, technology, capital and raw material etc, but these remain under-explored in the absence of the active and enthusiastic entrepreneurs, who have the ability to organize the various factors of productions.
Innovating entrepreneurs are rarely found in developing countries. In the past these countries have depended, largely on developed countries for their manufacturing requirements. But now they are planning to develop as early as possible for which they require modern kinds of innovating and imitating entrepreneurs. Fabian entrepreneurs do not want to take huge risk, they do not believe in making big changes, unless, of course, it becomes inevitable for their existence. Drone entrepreneurs go on using their own traditional techniques, even at a loss.
Industrial entrepreneurship in developing countries is about 15% of world industrial output. See; Woriel Baul Survey, 2002. The efforts are in progress for enlarging the developing countries share of world industrial output from 7% in 1974 to at least 25% by the year 2005 A.D. While scope for bilateral and multilateral cooperation exists between developed and developing countries, the developing countries can advantageously establish linkages among themselves in sharing technologies and industrial know how with each other.
CONCLUSION
Nigeria is blessed with abundant human and natural resources which if properly harnessed would have turned this country into a developed economy. But given the massive corruption, lack of commitment, the dominant role of public sector in the economic life of the nation, the country has lost opportunities for growth and sustainable development. Entrepreneurship is essential for rapid and sustained economic growth and development. It creates the required man power and skills necessary for accelerated growth, reduce unemployment and poverty. It is therefore strategic and wise for Nigeria to assign a significant and increasing role to entrepreneurship in their effort to revamp the economy.
It is an attempt to reverse this decline in the nation’s economy, that current government policy of private sector led growth for job and wealth creation which is anchored on entrepreneurship is being pursued with vigor. In this new dispensation, government is to provide an enabling and conducive environment for the private sector to strive. This could only come from total change of attitude and a genuine embrace of entrepreneurial development which is a contemporary phenomenon now. Globalization calls for value creation and greater competitiveness for Nigeria not to loose out.
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