Entrepreneurship education in Nigerian higher institutions has increasingly been recognized as a critical tool for addressing unemployment, fostering innovation, and promoting economic development. However, its current structure remains largely influenced by colonial legacies and Western-oriented models that often fail to reflect the socio-cultural and economic realities of Nigeria. This paper examines the need to decolonize entrepreneurship education as a strategy for enhancing sustainable creativity and innovation in a developing economy. It argues that the continued reliance on imported curricula limits students’ ability to develop context-relevant entrepreneurial skills and undermines the potential of indigenous knowledge systems. The paper adopts a critical perspective with highlights on how decolonization can reposition entrepreneurship education to be more inclusive, practical, and culturally grounded. By integrating local knowledge, community-based practices, and experiential learning, higher institutions can better equip students to identify and solve real-life problems within their immediate environments. Such an approach not only promotes creativity but also supports sustainable innovation that aligns with local needs and resources. Furthermore, the paper identifies key challenges to decolonizing entrepreneurship education as institutional resistance, inadequate policy support, and limited capacity among educators. Despite these challenges, it maintains that meaningful reform is essential for achieving long-term economic transformation in Nigeria. The paper concludes that decolonizing entrepreneurship education is a necessary step towards building a generation of innovative, self-reliant graduates capable of contributing to sustainable national development.
Keywords: Decolonization, Entrepreneurship Education, Sustainable Innovation, Creativity, Nigeria
