Fashola lauds Ibru, tasks youths on entrepreneurship

LAGOS State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, yesterday urged the nation’s youths, especially the teeming unemployed ones, to imbibe the spirit of entrepreneurship in order to drive the country’s economy.

Fashola stated this at a book launch in honour one of Nigeria’s foremost business moguls, Mr. Goodie Minabo Ibru, whose 70th birthday anniversary was held at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Lagos.

The governor said current situations in the country presented viable opportunities for Nigerian graduates to think of how to be employers of labour rather than seek paid employment where few existed.

Fashola, who joined other eminent Nigerians to extol the entrepreneurship courage of Ibru, also described the celebrant as a man of many parts and a stakeholder in several development projects in Lagos who “is worthy of emulation.”

His words: “At a time many if his generation were thinking about getting a job, he was thinking about creating jobs. That is the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that this country is in dire need of today.

“The Europeans have gone with all the capital they built. So if you are a graduate of Business Administration, what business are you going to administer if the businesses have gone? So all of us now have to wear the thinking cap of business creators. That is why I think Mr. Goodie Ibru and indeed, the Ibru family has to be celebrated in no small way.”

Director General, NIIA, Prof. Bola Akinterinwa, who reviewed the book titled: “Goodie Minabo Ibru: A life of Service and Enterprise”, described the celebrant as great industrialist who had made great impacts in Nigeria’s hospitality sector.