Inadequate Funding, SMEDAN’s Major Challenge – Masari

Bature Umar Masari is the director-general of Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN). In this interview with PEMBI DAVID-STEPHEN, he talks about the activities of the agency, its achievements and challenges, saying SMEDAN’s major challenge remains the issue of inadequate funding. 

What is the mandate of SMEDAN?

Over the years, since 2003 when the agency was established, it has been doing a lot in the area of enterprise creation and development, and identifying Nigerians who are interested in entrepreneurship creation and development; and providing training in entrepreneurship and vocational skills, so that Nigerians can be equipped to go into entrepreneurship creation and development. There are a lot of activities going on in the agency nationwide, and we have been able to ensure decentralisation of the activities of the agency in all the states of the federation, with offices in the six geo-political zones in the country. We did this so that our personnel can operate closely with their populace in the rural areas, who mostly need our intervention. We have equally increased the tempo of our activities in the area of entrepreneurship creation and vocational skills acquisition, especially with the introduction of National Enterprise Development Programme (NEDP). It’s an idea initiated by our minister, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, to ensure a holistic development of MSMEs in the country.