Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria, (SMEDAN), has reiterated Federal Government’s commitment to continue supporting small and medium enterprises access to finance, market and equipment to boost economic growth.
The Director General SMEDAN, Dr. Dikko Umar Radda disclosed this while presenting paper titled “Entrepreneurship: A tool for curbing insecurity in Nigeria”, organized by the centre for entrepreneurship studies, Ahmadu Bello University held at the University’s main campus, Samaru Zaria.
Dr. Dikko Radda, explained that 41.5 million Small and Medium Enterprise in Nigeria had employed about 59.6 per cent of Nigerians representing 76.5 percent of total level Poor’s of the country as at December, 31st 2017.
He said 99 percent of Nigeria’s SMEs were micro business, and have capital base of one naira to less than one million naira.
Similarly, Dan Buran Zazzau, Dr Sani Muhmood Sha’aban who also presented a paper titled, “Entrepreneurship: A tool for curbing insecurity in Nigeria”, said the concept of entrepreneurship should be used as a yardstick in addressing insecurity challenges, if government and people of the country could cohesively join hands and look at the problem through national and individual perspective.
He emphasised the need for Government at all levels to bring forward an approach and programmes that would have direct impact on the populace.
According to him, various palliative introduced by governments must reach the target audiences to reduce pervasive poverty bedevilling the country.
Dr Sani Muhmood Sha’aban described poverty, unemployment, corruption, lack of basic infrastructure and education as well unavailability of job opportunities among youth constituted major causes of insecurity and restiveness.
He therefore, called on governments at all levels to create a mechanism for integrating relevant social groups that demonstrate genuine and creative solutions in its wider efforts to address such menace.
Earlier, the Vice chancellor Ahmadu Bello University, Prof. Kabiru Bala, represented by Dean Student affairs, Prof. Fatihu, said the University had since started enterpreurship programme with various forms of skills training that were devided into various components for interested students to choose.
Cov/Ibrahim Suleiman, Zaria