The Igbo Entrepreneurs and Kano Economy in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This paper focuses on some selected Igbo entrepreneurs in the Kano metropolis during the period 1970-2015. It examines the role that the Igbo have played in the development of the Kano metropolis. There seems to be no universally accepted definition of entrepreneurship as different scholars have defined the concept differently. However, some authors have conceptualized entrepreneurship as the purposeful activity (including an integrated sequence of decisions) of an individual or group of associated individuals undertaken to initiate, maintain, or aggrandize a profit-oriented business to produce or distribute economic goods and services. Igbo entrepreneurship could be said to have genesis from the conditions or state of affairs the Igbo found themselves in after the Civil War. Before the Nigerian Civil War, the Igbo passion for quick acquisition of wealth was not as in recent times. This was so because essential capital formation and a pre-condition for any business ventures were not as easy as in the early 1900s of Igbo settlements in Northern Nigeria, including Kano. Thus, the Igbo youth of the pre-war period found it difficult to embark on any business that required substantial capital. After the Civil War in 1970, 49 percent of the Igbo ventured into different enterprises basically to earn a living. At the end of the Nigerian Civil War in the early 1970s, Sabon-Gari Kano, an area meant for nonindigenes, began drastic changes due to developments undertaken by the returnee Igbo. As they returned, some of them resumed their businesses, but some were unable to do so due to a lack of initial capital to take off the business. By the end of the civil war, Kano had developed as an increasingly working-class city with some major areas of settlements like Tudun-Wada, SabonGari, and the new residential areas of Zaria Road, Zoo Road and Gwammaja.