Emmanuel Ifeanyi 
The President of the African Association for Small and Medium Enterprises (AASME), Dr Darlington Kalu has said that governors who are not encouraging the growth of Micro-Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) are comfortable with poverty and unemployment.
The MSMEs specialist called on the Governors of various Nigerian states to prove that they are not comfortable with poverty and unemployment across their states by rescuing the dwindling fortunes of MSMEs in their various states.
Kalu urged the governors to take advantage of the removal of electricity from the exclusive legislative list to MSMEs in their states to help fight poverty and unemployment.
The AASME President made the call in Aba, Abia State during the celebration of this year’s “World MSME Day”, stressing that electricity is the biggest problem facing all MSMEs in Nigeria.
He urged the 36 State Governors to show dedication and commitment to service by venturing into power generation and supply, as the basic infrastructure towards reducing unemployment and poverty.
Kalu said that MSMEs despite the challenges have been the strength of Nigeria and the world in the fight against unemployment and poverty reduction as they contribute close to 70 per cent of employment and 50 per cent of the GDP across the world.
He said that inasmuch as the Federal Government has a huge part of the blame for the issue of unemployment, the opportunity created by the removal of electricity from the Exclusive List is not properly utilized by Governors.
Kalu added that with the excitement that surrounded the constitutional adjustment in the electricity sector in Nigeria, AASME had expected that by now, States should be bringing many investors into their electricity sector to boost their economy and save the nation from unemployment.
“The electricity supply in Nigeria is not on the increased supply as the managers are not making provision of New Power Generation but only using the acquired infrastructure they have as energy distribution companies to stare the nation’s MSMEs with high bills of none power existences this is affecting the economic development of the nation.
“The investors are not forthcoming, things are generally bad in the Nigerian economic system that it only requires that we should all come together and galvanise support with the women and youth entrepreneurs to build a stronger future together and we can’t do it in epileptic power supply.
“We in the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises MSMEs think that the solution to this economic hardship is a wide gap between the political parties in the power of the governance of Nigeria and the core operators of the MSMEs.
“We believe that both in the formal and informal sector of the National economy, the government are not carrying along the 95% of the population in the MSMEs so far along in their Planning, Policy and Implementation.”
He said that the inability of the government to carry along those in MSMEs while planning, making policies and implementing policies is drastically affecting the economy of the nation, as almost all economic policies end up hurting those the policy should have encouraged.
He called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to adopt their National Medium Development Plan Vision 2021-2025, which AASME mentioned during its sensitization summit that the Federal Government should set aside 30% of their budget, State 20% and L.G.A. 10% for encouraging MSMEs.
“With the above adoption, the Nigerian MSMES will be fully in charge to be developed and financially empowered for their business, innovation, training, skill and capacity with certification to join the global trend of the MSMES globalization.”
