The founder Grandehille Farms Limited, Mr Churchill Okafor, has emerged the overall winner of the 2023 COFEI Entrepreneurship Grant Award which held in Abuja with a reward of 1500 dollars.
Okafor who came tops in the contest was among 40 finalists who were selected from 9000 entries from across the country who registered for the programme.
Also, 39 others who participated in the young entrepreneurship contest were also rewarded with the sum of 750 dollars each to boost their businesses.
The founder CONNAK Foundation, Mr Kenneth Nnamdi Ukeagu, said the foundation which started 13 years ago with 10 students on scholarship without an office space, had grown branches all over the country and beyond and capable of giving out millions of naira to people.
While encouraging the young entrepreneurs, Mr Ukeagu said making it as an entrepreneur was not a day business, adding that it required a lot of hard work, commitment, devotion and discipline.
“I want to encourage you that you note that these things are not a one day thing. You don’t start today and make it the next day. You know in Nigeria now, we talk about ‘I want to blow’; you don’t blow the next day. You have to work. It requires a lot of commitment, a lot of devotion, a lot of discipline”.
He advised them to desist from the temptation of diverting the grants given to them by the foundation but to invest it in their various businesses.
The CONNAK Foundation founder warned that the money was not given to them as a national cake as the funds did not emanate from government but from private individual fund raisers who have a responsibility to be their brothers’ keeper.
He told the beneficiaries to consider it as a privilege and urged them to be in the position tomorrow to support other people.
Also, the Chief Executive Officer Carol Emeka Sunday in an interview urged upcoming entrepreneurs to look inwards and something gradually, especially, from their environments, urging graduates to create the job themselves with a view to employing others instead of waiting endlessly in search of non existent jobs.
