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Introduction
The worldwide preponderance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the great contributions they make to the economic development of countries make them engines of growth. In countries like China, Korea, India, Brazil, unprecedented levels of growth have been realised due to the contributions of SMEs (Keskin and Senturk 2010; Rath et al., 2012; Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 2017; Mohapatra and Dutta, 2017). For example, the China Bureau of Statistics (CBS) puts SMEs in China as constituting 98% of registered companies, and responsible for 58% of gross domestic product (GDP), 68% of exports and 82% of total employment. Despite the huge number of SMEs in Nigeria, their contributions to the economic development of country is poor when compared to other countries. For example, according to the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), SMEs account for 97% of total registered companies (comparable to that of China), but account for only 20% of GDP, 7.27% of exports, and 50% of employment (Aliogo and Eneh, 2013; Eniola and Ektebang, 2014). Comments have appeared in studies and popular media of the need to find a solution to the abysmal performance of SMEs in Nigeria so as to take their performance to that of SMEs in developed and developing nations (Eniola and Ektebang, 2014). Enhancing the performance of SMEs will also help in the diversification of the Nigerian economy which at present is heavily dependent on the oil industry. SMEs by their formation cut across many industries and if effective will enhance the contribution of many industries to the GDP of the nation.
Past studies in Nigeria have made attempt to find solution to the poor performance of SMEs in Nigeria. These studies can be placed into three categories. The first category studied the effectiveness of SMEs and the reasons for their poor performance (Agwu and Emeti, 2014; Ebitu et al., 2016). These studies attributed the poor performance of SMEs in Nigeria to myriads of problems which are broadly categorised as government and policy issues, managerial, and operational issues. The results of these studies may have influenced the activities of successive Nigerian governments to establish many organisations to support SMEs so that they can play their role as engines of economic growth in the...