Veekee James, Business Experts Urge Lagos Corps Members To Turn Skills Into Sustainable Businesses
By Sherif Salau
Award-winning fashion designer Veekee James and other business experts have urged corps members at the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Lagos Orientation Camp in Iyana-Ipaja to leverage their acquired skills, embrace innovation and build sustainable businesses capable of creating jobs and promoting economic growth.
Veekee James, serving as a judge at the Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) Inter-Platoon Competition, delivered a clear message: talent alone is not enough. She urged the young graduates to embrace entrepreneurship, create real value and build businesses that can last. Start small, she advised. Learn from failure. Pair skill with originality, discipline and a focus on solving problems for customers.
Her words carried weight. James has built a recognised fashion brand through the same combination of craft and business sense she now recommends to the next generation. Alongside her on the panel were other experienced voices. Olusola Faleye, Managing Director of Lagos Building Investment Company PLC, stressed the central role of integrity in forming lasting business relationships. Fashion entrepreneur Tomike Adeoye reminded participants that pricing must reflect the value they deliver, not merely the cost of materials or the desire to undercut competitors.
The competition itself put the advice to the test. Corps members displayed work across several fields: beauty products, henna design, agriculture, fashion, ICT and renewable energy. Platoon 2 took the fashion category, with Udeme Esther (LA/26C/8812) emerging as the overall fashion winner and receiving an industrial sewing machine. Cash prizes of ₦100,000 were awarded to category winners. Platoon 2 also claimed the tie-dye and food categories, Platoon 7 won makeup, and Platoon 5 took the barbing prize.
Lagos State NYSC Coordinator Mrs Christiana Salmwang praised the corps members for the progress made during the nine-day SAED programme. She encouraged them to treat the training as a beginning rather than an endpoint, urging them to keep refining their skills long after they leave the camp gates.
The event sits within a broader national conversation. With formal employment opportunities remaining scarce for many young graduates, the SAED programme has become one of the NYSC’s most practical responses. It seeks to shift the mindset from job-seeking to job-creating, equipping participants with both technical skills and the commercial instincts needed to turn those skills into income.
For the Lagos batch, the message was consistent across the judges: the difference between a hobby and a sustainable business lies in discipline, value creation, honest dealings and the willingness to begin modestly and improve over time. Whether in fashion, food, beauty or technology, the path from camp workshop to viable enterprise begins with treating skill as the foundation of a product or service that customers will pay for repeatedly.
As the winners collected their prizes and the rest of the platoons returned to their barracks, the challenge left behind was straightforward. The training and the competition had provided tools and a platform. The harder work of building something that lasts begins after the orientation ends.
