The Nigeria government introduced entrepreneurship education as a pathway to stimulate self- sufficiency, self-sustainability and self-support culture in students. The aim is to ensure graduates take advantages of personal resourcefulness to be self-employed. This is because entrepreneurship concerns the persistent pursuit of opportunities to create wealth through innovative creation of a product or service that meets customer’s needs using scare resources in a way that results in a growth enterprise which satisfies the expectation of stakeholders whose roles sustain the business. Against this backdrop, therefore, the paper examines the concepts of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education and self-reliance. The paper equally examines the role of entrepreneurship education in self-reliance and economic development and highlighted the challenges for entrepreneurship education in Nigeria such as inadequate funding, lack of materials, entrepreneurship teachers among others. Finally, it recommends that the government should strive to release up to 26% of their annual budget for education as suggested by UNESCO.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship education, self-Reliance and Economic Development
