Nigerian Defence Academy and Military Entrepreneurship: Challenges and Prospects

Introduction

Recent scholarship has studied factors that favour military entrepreneurship and the challenges facing such endeavours, but the entrepreneurship pursuit of military institutions has not been sufficiently explored. Although assessing some aspects of military entrepreneurship, these studies have overlooked military institutions and their activities in setting up enterprises in Nigeria, with the attendant possibilities and risks that follow such entrepreneurial schemes. For instance, Madichie and Ayasi (2018) have thoroughly examined entrepreneurial opportunities and challenges for retired senior military officers in Nigeria. Other literature on military entrepreneurship emphasizes the role of veterans in franchising, factors mediating the success or failure of military entrepreneurs (Kerrick & Cumberland et al, 2014). Many of these studies are mainly done in other climes, with few being focused on military entrepreneurship in Nigeria. The conclusions and assumptions are sometimes not applicable within the Nigerian context, for instance, franchising by retired military officers in Nigeria is rare, yet this dominates the literature by scholars elsewhere. This complicates our understanding of military entrepreneurship as a whole.

Despite the growing agency military institutions display in entrepreneurial activities, studies have not investigated military institutions in enterprises within their structure. Overall, existing literature considers military entrepreneurship in Nigeria as a post-service endeavor. This chapter specifically focuses on military entrepreneurship to explore the entrepreneurial activities of Nigerian Defence Academy, (NDA) Consult ltd, focusing on problems and prospects of military institutions in Nigeria as spaces for entrepreneurial activities. Specific questions addressed are: What is military entrepreneurship within the context of Nigeria? How does the Nigerian Defence Academy, Consult Ltd display a form of military entrepreneurship within military institutions? What are the problems, and prospects of military entrepreneurship in Nigeria? By blending research on recent literature on military entrepreneurship, this chapter draws upon data from NDA Consult ltd, and interviews from consumers of NDA Consult products. The findings of the paper contribute to the literature on military entrepreneurship in Nigeria.