PHCCIMA Calls for Entrepreneurship Training in Schools as Poverty Deepens

The Port Harcourt Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture has called on Nigerian authorities to introduce entrepreneurship training for students at an early stage of their education, citing rising poverty across the country.

The business group, known as PHCCIMA, argued that waiting until university — or until graduates hit a hostile job market — is too late. Its position: business skills belong in the classroom while students are still young, not as a rescue plan after unemployment has already set in.

The chamber made the call in comments reported by BusinessDay, framing early entrepreneurship education as a structural answer to poverty rather than a welfare measure.

Why is PHCCIMA pushing this now?

The trigger is economic pressure on Nigerian households. Poverty has deepened as inflation erodes incomes and formal-sector jobs remain scarce. PHCCIMA's argument is straightforward: the economy cannot absorb every graduate into paid employment, so the education system has to produce people who can build businesses, not just apply for jobs.

That logic tracks with what chambers of commerce across Nigeria have said for years. Small and mid-sized enterprises carry most of the country's private employment, yet few students ever receive formal training in how to start or run one. The gap between what schools teach and what the market demands is where PHCCIMA wants policy to move.

The takeaway in plain words: teach the skills before the poverty, not after it.

What would early training actually change?

PHCCIMA's proposal targets the foundation of the education pipeline. Instead of entrepreneurship appearing as an elective late in tertiary education, students would encounter business fundamentals — thinking commercially, managing money, spotting opportunity — much earlier.

The chamber sees two payoffs:

• Fewer graduates stranded without options. Students who leave school with practical business skills can create work for themselves and others rather than queue for scarce vacancies.
• A stronger SME base over time. A generation trained in enterprise from childhood compounds into more resilient local businesses, which chambers like PHCCIMA represent.

The one-line version: the earlier the training starts, the less the economy has to fix later.

The so-what

PHCCIMA has put the ball with policymakers — education ministries, curriculum setters and school administrators — who would have to translate the call into actual classroom content. The chamber's intervention adds business-community weight to a debate Nigeria keeps having as poverty tightens: whether schools should produce job-seekers or job-creators. Until curriculum follows, the call stands as a marker of where the country's commercial establishment thinks reform is overdue.

By Grace Kim