My country people! Really time wait for nobody. Many of us here get skills but Lack the courage to work towards am.
OP I like the topic but I think I will disagree with you on this, when you said the skill but lack courage to work on it, if I may ask what kind of skills are you referring to?, is it self employ skills or industrial skills? If is self employ skills how can you put your skill to work when you are financially unstable because there are people whom the kind of skills they acquire can take up to a millions plus to set up the workshop so how do you expect someone who could barely have three square meal a day to get up to a million naira plus to start up a workshop and also when we talk about industrial skills we are Reffering to the skills that can only be put to work or practice in an industrial or construction company and we no how difficult it is on getting a job from oil companies and even if there is job advert that includes your skill they will need five years of working experience so how could someone applied when they don't have such years of experience, so there are people who has different skills but we're not giving the opportunity to showcase there talent so can we blame such person for not trying?.
If we no blame them or even ourselves ( for our own failures), who we go con blame, the companies with standards for workers or the skills for deceiving you and not letting you know on time that money would be needed to practice such skills.
Firstly, for raising of funds, there are millions of ways out there one can acquire funds in order to set up a business. I mean how did other business people do it, do you think they were rich from the start and just all wanted to invest their money? Some collected loans, some saved, some borrowed from friends and family at cheaper interest rates, some from venture capitalists and many more. So there's no excuse, you don't have money, you must not have money from the start.
There are even skills that allows one to fund the product or service with customers money. Take catering and tailoring for example ( that's apart from having your utensils and tailoring machine) even if you don't have the equipment, you can borrow from a friend, loan from someone, etc.
Now secondly, industrial skills. If getting five years experience is what they want, there are many other companies out there that are also looking for worker. They're not the first nor the last company in the world. And if you really want to be in the organization cause of one thing or the other... Then get the 5 years experience. Alot of people even at old age have stories of them going back to schools, ICAN and ANAN lectures, uni, PHD lectures just to acquire knowledge and certificates for one thing or the other and they did not die. You're still young and you can do better. Getting a work experience even means that you'll be earning salaries while trying to achieve the five years experience.
And then, I don't think anyone should be shy of showing off a skill they paid money and sweat to learn. I mean, reading what OP wrote, what came to my head was people with poor communication skills or good communication skills/ marketing skills and then stage freight. Then there's people who can dance and sing, but miss opportunities cause of the same stage freight and fear of criticism.
In conclusion, don't give yourself any excuse. "Whatever does not kill you, would only make you stronger" . Don't let fear end you. Time waits for no man, so pick yourself up everytime you fail, and continue doing what you're doing, every day.