There is no doubt that Nigeria as a nation, since attaining independence to 1960 has tried out various economic policies in a bid to achieve meaningful economic development. Most of these policies, one must say, are centrally planned and government dominated. The resultant impact of this excessive government domination of the economy left much to be desired leading to massive divestment in the 1990’s by the government. This is done under the economic policy of "privatization and commercialization".

This shift emphasis thus created a challenge of building capable, dynamic and resourceful entrepreneurs to take the baton of economic revitalization from government. These entrepreneurs incidentally have to fulfill this onerous task through the establishment pf business that could mainly be classified as small and medium scale in nature. It is pertinent to add here that the aforementioned task is a difficult one for obvious reasons. For one, the dwindling state of the economy has made it difficult for people to save and thereby little capital accumulation for investment. Further our private sector is long undeveloped making experienced entrepreneur and small business managers scarce. 

There is a growing consensus among policy makers, academia, industrialist and economic planners, that the development of local entrepreneur and encouragement of the establishment of small and medium scale business is the only penance to our economic planners. The conclusion came as a result of over three decades of positioning government as the sole provider of all that makes life worth living, basic infrastructures, public utilities, good roads and services. Etc.

It was discovered that the return for the huge investments made into it are gross inefficiency massive unemployment, dwindling foreign exchange earnings, epileptic supply of utilities etc. The foregoing led to the adoption of structural adjustment programme (SAP) and subsequent deregulation exercise. The later shifted it from government to private entrepreneurs who are expected to establish small and medium scale business as a more efficient substitute to providing the needed catalyst towards our economic engineering.

TABLE OF CONTENT
TITLE PAGE                                II
APPROVAL PAGE                            III
DEDICATION                                IV
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT                        V
ABSTRACT                                X
TABLE OF CONTENT                            XIII

CHAPTER ONE
1.1    Introduction                            1
1.2    Purpose of the study                        4
1.3    Research questions                        5
1.4    Statement of hypothesis                    6
1.5    Significance of the study                    7
1.6    Scope of the study                        9
1.7    Limitation of the study                        9
1.8    Definition of terms                        11

CHAPTER TWO
2.1    Literature review                            16
2.2    Historical review of small and medium scale enterprises in Nigeria (SME)                            17
2.3    Critical definition of small and medium scale enterprises (SME).                                22
2.4    General characteristics of small and medium scale enterprises.                            30
2.5    Role and importance of SMEs                35
2.6    Problems of SMEs                        40
2.7    References                                58

CHAPTER THREE
3.1    Research design and methodology            59
3.2    Location of data                            60
3.3    Population                                60
3.4    Instrument of data collection                    61
3.5    Validation of instruments                    61
3.6    Reliability of instrument                    62
3.7    Treatment of data                        63

CHAPTER FOUR
4.1    Data presentation and Analysis                65

CHAPTER FIVE
5.1    Findings, conclusion and Recommendation         98
5.2    Summaries of finding                        98
5.3    Conclusion                                100
5.4    Recommendations                        102
Bibliography                             105