The president of Al-Manar Women Association (ANWA), Mrs. Rabi Umar Sodangi, has said that no business can succeed if the owner does not have entrepreneurship education.
Speaking at the first ANWA Women Entrepreneurship workshop in Kaduna, yesterday, Mrs. Sodangi said the association, which has trained over 1000 women, decided to organize the workshop aimed at sensitizing women on how to run successful businesses.
She said, the “Nigerian population is rising and despite government effort, unemployment is also rising because the people that have been empowered with one trade or the other are not conversant with entrepreneurship; they can produce items but they do not know where to get the market.”
While noting that the association, which started with borrowed classrooms, presently has four centres located in Rigasa, Rafin Guza, Kabala and Malali, she urged interested participants to register their names and the businesses they will want to engage in at the end of the workshop.
She noted that starting a business in Nigeria is not a luxury but a necessity if one wants to maintain his dignity adding, “the association is collaborating with the African Women Entrepreneurship Programme where they have been building capacity on how to export finished goods because the Nigerian population is a blessing and a market for national and international trade.”
According to her, “Women have competitive edge over men in business because as women, we become pregnant and we carry the pregnancy for nine months and we were patient with it. When we have the baby, they cry at night, they fall sick but we are patient hoping and using all available and unavailable resources to ensure those children succeed in life.
“That patience and feeling that you have for your child to grow and be successful is the same type of feeling you should have for your business and it will definitely grow. Women have been endowed with the capacity to have emotional intelligence by God by having empathy for other people and try to help them.”
