Most Irish entrepreneurs do not have to contend with verbal abuse, threats, attacks on their property and even death threats to add to the myriad of usual problems they encounter when setting up their businesses.

But at one stage, it was almost a daily occurrence for Ms Felicia Olima, founder and owner of Citas Computer and IT Training, who recently won the Inner City Enterprise (ICE) Award.

Nigerian-born Ms Olima was the subject of a torrent of racist abuse, which not only impacted on her personally, but also on her business. At one stage, there were so many abusive phone calls, she did not even answer her own phone.

"When I had this problem with racism, I wasn't answering the phone. Now, who is the best person to sell, other than the person who owns the business? But I had to leave the phone to someone else," she said.

Ms Olima founded the Abbey Street-based company in 1996. While the circumstances behind her setting up the business might strike a common note with many who have pursued that route in the past - the inability to get a job - the timing, combined with Ms Olima's highly qualified and experienced background, suggests other factors also played a part.

When Ms Olima sought work in 1996, she found it difficult to secure employment, at a time when the Celtic tiger was clearing its throat and Government and employers were starting to look for highly qualified people to come to Ireland.

In terms of qualifications and experience, Ms Olima should have seemed like an employer's dream ticket. A graduate member of The Marketing Institute of Ireland in 1980, Ms Olima then graduated with a BSc (Management) Degree and MA from Trinity College in 1981. Returning to her native Nigeria in 1982, Ms Olima was employed by the Benue Brewery as sales manager. She was subsequently promoted to marketing manager and then to research and training manager. On returning to Ireland in 1990, Ms Olima furthered her education by completing postgraduate certificate courses in computer data processing and computer applications programming. Short-term employment with a number of companies, including Wilton Research and Marketing and Export Edge Limited, followed over the next two years. In addition to periods of unemployment between 1995 and 1996, Ms Olima also completed a diploma course in direct marketing from the Fitzwilliam Institute in 1995.

Despite these qualifications and years of work experience, no job offers appeared. Ms Olima applied for more than 300 positions. Even after attending interviews for around half of these jobs, she received no formal job offers.

She sought guidance from the Dublin Business Innovation Centre, where she was advised to consider setting up her own business, given that potential employers may have felt threatened by her education, work experience and the colour of her skin.

"In a few places I was told nobody would employ me because of my skin and how would a client feel if they saw a black person actually sitting at the desk," she said. "Other companies would say they wouldn't entrust the organisation to a foreigner. Other people felt threatened because maybe they were seven or eight years junior to me. If I was there, maybe they felt they could lose their jobs because I could do the exact same work as them as I had the qualifications and the experience."

It was to be her first experience of discrimination. The more extreme version was to come later when she set up her own company.

Refusing to be discouraged by her experiences, Ms Olima enrolled in a Dublin Business Innovation Centre year-long, start your own business course. In September 1996, she started her company with one computer, providing one-to-one training and writing instruction manuals. In December she established contact with Inner City Enterprise, seeking assistance. Inner City Enterprise initially provided a computer on a free loan basis to enable Ms Olima to increase her capacity to provide training courses. The following year, she moved to a new premises in Abbey Street with Inner City Enterprise providing a rent subsidy of £1,200.

But it was at this stage that Ms Olima experienced a more frightening side of racial discrimination. Her business and property were targeted by racist elements.

"I had so many calls to the office telling me to leave, telling me to go back to my own country, telling me to close, telling me they were going to burn down the office. They went to my house and sprayed my car with acid. That car is written off now. They said they were going to burn the house down," she said.

Despite the severity of the threats and her previous experiences of discrimination, Ms Olima remained upbeat throughout and adjusted to the problems.

"For the one person who is doing this to me, the response and support I get from the other Irish people is overwhelming. So, I don't take it seriously," she said.

Nor did she ever feel like giving up, and at no stage did either she or her husband, Patrick, a GP in the city, want to leave the country.

"I'm the kind of person, if I'm determined to do anything, I do it. I have done nothing wrong. I have genuinely helped people. I work with the local community. This is our home. We have had all of our children here. Most of them were born in the Rotunda. They are doing well here and I believe they are going to contribute to this country," she said.

A sign of her dedication and hard work is the fact that she works six-day weeks and regularly puts in a 12-hour day.

"I don't leave anything until the following day," she said.

Free time is a vague notion. A two-week holiday in her native Nigeria with her six children is the only luxury she affords herself during the year.

Even Sundays are spent raising funds or visiting people for St Vincent de Paul. Her strong religious beliefs have helped her through the lean times, she said.

"I was brought up by the Holy Ghost Fathers and I still believe how they brought me up actually made me what I am today. I don't have malice with anybody," she said.

In fact, it was on the recommendation of the Holy Ghost Fathers that she originally came to Ireland with her husband to study in 1974. Apart from the racial abuse, Ms Olima found the normal problems associated with setting up, such as raising the necessary cash, less of a problem than most.

"I've been with the same bank since I was a student. I didn't owe them anything, so they gave me a personal loan and it helped to start up," she said.

Rent subsidies from Inner City Enterprise and two employment grants from the Dublin City Enterprise Board also helped her to expand the business.

The drive and determination displayed by Ms Olima in facing down discrimination has also manifested itself in her business dealings.

Over the past four years Citas has made considerable progress. Employing four full-time and three part-time people, it has a 21-computer network system and runs courses ranging from beginners courses to diploma courses and FAS back-to-work courses. Certification has also been received from Pitman, ECDL and Microsoft. Sales turnover is now around £70,000 per annum.

"There were many predictions that I wouldn't survive. I was told it's a small business, customers wouldn't come to me, the computer business is very complicated, it requires a lot of investment. But I persevered. I believed in myself and I believed the market was there," she said.

The experience gained from working in Nigeria proved to be invaluable when it came to running the business.

"I set up the marketing department of a brewery which had just opened. I did most of the planning and it became a very viable company. So I had no problem setting up here," she said.

And Ms Olima is not content to allow her award-winning business to just tick over.

"We intend to broaden the business into programming, networking and Internet access," she said. "We will also expand into software engineering if we have enough money to invest in that area."