IMPACT OF SMALL AND MEDIUM SCALE ENTERPRISES IN THE GENERATION OF EMPLOYMENT IN LAGOS STATE.

Abstract

For an economy to live up to expectation in the committee of nation’s development, such economy must achieve accelerated economic growth and development which is sine qua non for improving quality of life. Small and medium scale enterprises are strategic to attainment of economic prosperity objective of any government. The economy depends on its working population for economic growth and development in which the youths constitute greatest percentage and this further establishes the reason why the youth should be gainfully employed. The youth should be encouraged to develop and nurture entrepreneurial spirit since entrepreneurship reduces poverty and improve standard of living. In this research A total of a hundred (150) copies of the questionnaires were administered out of which one hundred and twenty (120) copies representing (80%) of the questionnaire were properly completed and
retrieved while thirty (30) copies representing 20% were not retrieved. The instruments used to gather information for this study includes questionnaires and interview. Two different statistical methods were employed to analyze data for the study; the tools are simple percentage and chisquare (X2 ).The results shows that small and medium scale enterprises and sustainable development of the Nigerian economy are related, just as promotion of SMEs and improvement in employment generation are related. The researcher therefore concluded that for a nation irrespective of its economic ideology to achieve meaningful and sustainable development,
adequate attention must be given to wide spread of economic activities through entrepreneurship and small and medium scale enterprise generation.