Olubunmi Dawodu, the Lagos State manager at SMEDA has emphasised that Nigerian economy suffers as small and medium enterprises (SMEs) operate at the fraction of their potential, due to lack of market access, and for lack of skills or creativity.
Dawodu in his keynote address at the BusinessDay Go Local Summit 2025, held in Lagos, said, “Many Nigeria SMEs operate at a fraction of their potential not because they lack skills.
“Nigerian entrepreneurs among the most resourceful in the world, not because they lack creativity, our fashion, our music, our technology, our innovation, are celebrated globally.”
He emphasised that these entrepreneurs operate below capacity because of one critical challenge, market access and local demand. “We have textile manufacturers in Kano with machines running at 30 percent capacity. We have leather goods producers in ABA compelled competing with counterfeits from abroad. Food processors across the country, watch imported alternatives dominate, supermarket shelves” he noted.
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Dawodu reiterated SMEs need to build tech solutions that foreign apps cannot understand. Besides, he encouraged Nigerians to patronise made in Nigerian good and services to boost the country’s GDP.
“When you spend N1000 on an imported product, that money leaves our economy. It supports jobs elsewhere, it strengthens another country’s currency, and it contributes to another nation’s GDP, but when you spend that N1000 on the local products or locally made product, the manufacturers earns revenue.
“They pay their workers. Those workers buy food from local farmers. These farmers then send their children to school, and the school employs teachers, and the teachers patronize local businesses, and the circle continues economic call economics,” he said
Furthermore, the SMEDAN Lagos manager, said that studies show that the multiplier effects indicate that every Naira spent locally can circulate through the economy three to five times before leaving.
“That’s N1000 of economic activity. That’s 3000 to 5000 of economic activities, multiplying that by millions of transaction. And you are not talking about marginal gain. You are talking about transformation.
“The employment equation shows a small garment factory in Lagos employs 50 people directly. But when you trace the ecosystem, 20 carbon farmers supply this fabric. 10 people in logistics and transportation are also present, five in packaging materials, eight in retail distribution, countless others in utilities, maintenance and then services, one small business, 50 direct employees, but hundreds of livelihood connected to its success,” he noted.
In addition, he said, “When we buy foreign, products, we export those jobs. When we buy local products, we create an employment ecosystem that ripples through communities, lifts families out of poverty, and then build the middle class nation desperately needs.”
Speaking on the way out, Dawodu said that Nigerians should make the right market choices to boost the economy by boosting the local products.
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“Your market choices are monetary votes, and when millions of us vote for local the naira strengthens, not through Central Bank, again I mentioned, not through Central Bank intervention alone, but through fundamental demands and supply dynamics.
“So now, how do we move from these raw potentials to real market powers? How do we make buying local more than a slogan and then turn it into a movement? Let me outline the pathways that I think you know and the role each of us must play, quality and competitiveness, the producers promise to our manufacturers and small business owners. I say this, local cannot be synonymous with inferior the days of excusing poor quality because something is made in Nigeria and that over global standards are not beyond us,” he said
He said that boosting local product production is within reach. “We must invest in training and skills development, embrace quality control and certification, innovate constantly, and then listen to customers feedback and evolve.
“Excellence must be our brand. When a Nigerian-made product meets international standards. It doesn’t just compete,” he said
