Training as a nexus for entrepreneurial emergence: An appraisal of OGEGEP trainees experience in Ogun State, Nigeria

The success, or otherwise, of any commercial venture is a function of many factors among which is training. A business would survive the initial challenges if it is able to maximize its core competences in order to assert its strengths, minimize its frailties and overcome its threats. Small scale enterprises have been identified as the drivers of economies in Sub-Sahara Africa. However, the rate at which small scale enterprises fail in Nigeria is alarming due to the fact that an average small scale business in Nigeria does not survive beyond the first five years of its establishment. A stratified sample of two hundred trainees of the Ogun State Employment Programme (OGEGEP) was taken out of the six hundred undergoing training to ascertain the role(s) of training in entrepreneurial emergence. The trainees were selected, based on the programmes they were being trained for. Data were collected from the respondents with the aid of a well structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean, frequency and percentage, while the hypothesis formulated was tested with correlation and t-test. The study reveals that there is a close correlation between training and entrepreneurial emergence, and that training is an important tool, which will help businesses grow.