Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has revved up the engine of governance with the recent appointments of Boards and Management of parastatals/agencies – and one such very critical engagement is the headship of the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency, SMEDAN, to oxygenate the economy by stimulating the industry which is the engine room of sustainable economic growth.
So, the recent appointment of Charles Odii as Chief Executive Officer/Director General, SMEDAN, attests to the desire of the government to truly engage competent, young, smart Nigerians having the right zest and agility to change the economic landscape of the country. After two decades, a review of the vision and core mandate of SMEDAN vis-a-vis its strategic roles, given the dwindling fortunes of SMEs and entrepreneurs across the country, needs a critical realignment and recalibration of its entire ecosystem and positioned to deliver its preconceived agenda.
Indeed, 20 years provides sufficient grounds to interrogate the elements that will reawaken the agency and drive that space productively and profitably for stakeholders because leadership is where to begin. Charles Odii, the new sheriff at SMEDAN, comes to industry watchers as a fitting approximation and combination of the right energy of education, experience, competence, and passion to navigate the tides of the SME landscape.
An indigene of Delta State, Charles is a product of Covenant University, where he graduated with honours in Management Information System, and he holds a Master’s in Media and Communication from the School of Media and Communications, Pan Atlantic University, another Ivy League school in the country, specializing in marketing and communication.
Mr Odii, a vibrant Nigerian, cut his teeth heading the marketing unit of Bilateral Communication, a UK-based organization, and for about a decade and a half, worked himself through the entire gamut of branding, media, communication, marketing, tech/IT, PR, healthcare, change management, leadership, online marketing, etc, both at home and abroad. In 2014, his passion for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs), drove him to begin SME100Africa leveraging on hands-on experience and valued interactions with the industry.
SME100Africa was an instant hit that transverses the continent, impacting the SME space and driving measurable growth in so short a time, and in Nigeria, it became a hub and incubator for SMEs, providing strategic interventions, mentoring for budding entrepreneurs and strengthening already established firms.
The platform attracted and disbursed millions of naira and dollars as take-off seed funds and capital interventions and provided expertise and strategies for growth and continuity for SMEs. It becomes imperative to plug the space with the right peg if the subsector in Nigeria can gain ascendency and trigger tangible economic recovery and sustainable growth, because most developed economies around the world place a premium on it as a strategic driver of industry growth.
For the United States, touted as the largest economy in the world, a recent statistic reveals the country has over 33 million small-scale firms that account for 99.9 per cent of businesses and China, the second largest economy, has its private sector driven by SMEs and these small businesses in China constitute about 95% of the private sector- amounting to over 140 million SMEs, which make up about 80% of new jobs, contribute about 50% of its national tax and drive about 60% of its economic output.
The story is not different in the United Kingdom, where SMEs constitute about 99.9% of its private sector businesses, which stood at 5.5 million and accounts for an impressive 52% of the private sector overall turnover – a significant contributor to the GDP. So, name it from France to Italy, Germany, UAE, Indonesia, Sweden, Cyprus, Singapore, Denmark, South Korea, Hong Kong (China), etc; small businesses serve as economic catalysts, and nations do all it takes to nurture and grow that space jealously and tenaciously.
It puts burden on the shoulders of the new team at SMEDAN because the SME landscape in Nigeria is currently nothing to write home about because there’s been so much talk and motion but insignificant movement, so, as a matter of urgency, SMEDAN must be deliberate and recalibrate its processes and interventions to realign with its core mandate of serving as a vanguard for rural industrialization, tackling poverty, driving job creation and enhancing livelihood, because objective evaluations of these metrics are very disheartening.
There is no gainsaying that the biggest obstacle to SME growth in Nigeria today is the absence of power- this is way outside the remit of SMEDAN. Another big issue in the envelope beyond the agency’s purview is infrastructure, leaving most SMEs comatose across the length and breadth of the nation – occasioned by many years of disastrous leadership.
Outside the monsters mentioned above, Mr Charles Odii, no doubt, is familiar with the myriad of challenges bedevilling the SME subsector in the country requiring a more creative and purpose-driven approach is imperative for any meaningful progress in the shortest possible time, so business as usual and solutions above the heads of the operators, a common practice by the agency, will mean a journey to the dark days.
So, some pertinent questions for Mr Odii are: can we see some creativity augmentation of the traditional credit structure with recent financing models like crowdfunding, angel investing, and venture capital and make the process not cumbersome,
Can financial literacy and entrepreneurial capacity building be broken down into practical and realistic frames; more market accessibility- especially for agricultural products; can we interrogate the regulatory and governance structures around SME development and growth in the country; can we see more honest government support and less corruption in the dealings of public officials handling SME issues in this country? How can we integrate more tech solutions in SME operations where necessary?
Can there be partnerships and synergies between the federal and state agencies to effectively collaborate for accelerated SME growth across the board instead of working at cross purposes? What is the future for SMEs and exports in the country with the countless challenges across their parts at the sea and land borders?
We must not fail to call the attention of Mr Charles Odii to the burden of multiple taxations hampering the growth of SMEs in the country, from local government levies to state collections, etc. We need a more compact and tax-friendly regime to enable SMEs to breathe and run more cost-effectively.
The list is endless, but the confidence is that Mr Charles Odii, the mint Chief Executive Office/DG, is not thrust into uncharted waters, and he brings to the table valuable cognate experience gleaned locally and internationally to bear in changing the landscape of SMEs in the country. If SMEDAN fails, it will not be for a lack of knowing what to do by the new Chief Executive but a lack of will to be different.
Nigeria has about 37 million MSMEs, with about 99% being micro-small scattered all over the country and 67% owned by youth, who shall be looking forward to profound but reasonable surgical changes from an equally young and vibrant CEO/DG of SMEDAN.
The subsector should take its rightful place as the engine room of the economy and a critical GDP contributor under the watch of Mr Charles Odii – an appointment hailed by industry watchers and critics as one of the best things coming from this government, among others.
