BY SAMUEL OYADONGHA

Bayelsa State could best be described as civil service state which internally generated revenue is nothing to write home about, but the administration of Governor Seriake Dickson, conscious of the role played by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the growth of any economy established this unit of government to revive the sector in the state where everything in the predominantly riverine state revolves around the Government House.

In this interview, Mr. Jasper Eradiri, the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Small and Medium Enterprises, explains efforts to revitalize the ailing sector and diversify the economy of the state to make room for more revenue for government.

Wealth creation

Our mandate is to create wealth, entrepreneur capacity building, generate employment and also help increase the internally generated revenue of the state. As you can see, these are all sequentially related. One bridges the other and, since we came on stream, we have taken different measures to change the orientation and the scene we came to meet.

It is sad that almost all products and services in Bayelsa State are at their lowest level of production. I was appointed on May 30, 2012 and, from June 1, we rolled out our plan of action and the timeline. One of the first things we did was to call a town hall meeting and we included what we called business management organisations such as the Nigeria Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (NASME),we also called the Nigeria Association of Small Scale Industrialists (NASI), we called SMEDAN trainees, Bayelsa State chapter, the YOU WIN awardees forum, Yenagoa Chamber of Commerce, Industry Mines and Agriculture.

We called them to discuss the issues of SMEs in Bayelsa State, the approaches and strategies to improve the situation we met. Thereafter, we had a follow up meeting to enable them make inputs into our plan of action for 2012.

Specifically, in August, we looked at the scenario concerning the SMEs in Bayelsa State. How can we help them when we don’t know what they do, we don’t know where they are, we don’t what kind of need that is required for them? This is because we have a way of thinking; we have the ‘3 C’ approach which is concept, capacity and capital. If you give people the right concept or vision, you have given them capacity which is training them. We are certain if we give them capital which is support at this time, the money will go down well, they will use it constructively, but if they don’t have any of these and you give them capital, that will be waste.

So, basically, thinking along those lines, we felt we should have a database and the governor graciously approved that the exercise be carried out. So, from August 9, the collation of the SMEs was carried out hitch free. We were able to get as far as Akassa, Ekeremor at one end and Brass, we touched everybody. By the time we gave the report to the governor, he said, `don’t close it; keep it open because certain people will still come’. So we created an area called special area for those not captured in the various LGAs, we felt when they come we will slot them there.

What was the exercise precisely for?

You identify the SMEs and know what they want and the next line will now be to conduct a need assessment. Some people may require equipment, others may need raw cash and others could also need training; diverse SMEs will have diverse needs and so having this in mind, we felt we should approach it in this manner and to God be the glory.

I have done a lot of travels and this is because the governor felt we need to be exposed to the best global practice. I came back and have given my report to the governor. We are following through on this. What we can tell our people is that we have investors coming from Asia and they are coming to Africa.

Our SMEs stand to gain a lot from this. In a nutshell, we have done a lot of networking worldwide and we have partnered different institutions locally and internationally and all these are good for the state.

Back home we have had series of workshop and symposium with stakeholders in the state. We have also interacted with the Nigeria Export Promotion Council and the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria. So, this is bringing seriousness to SMEs in Bayelsa State.

Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa

Is the agreement entered into with Bank of Industry on SME under your purview?
Yes, Friday December 7 was a memorable day for all of us. The Bank of Industry officially received N1bn support, partnership support from the state government in which they as well are to bring in their counterpart fund of N1bn, so we can clearly say there is N2bn for SME support in Bayelsa State. To demonstrate the seriousness of government, the governor inaugurated a committee headed by the commissioner for Science Technology that will develop and administer the strategy to disburse the fund and how to support SME.

All these investment trips trying to promote Bayelsa, to the ordinary person out there you are spending a lot of money which should have been ploughed in the state for them to see what is happening. How do you convince the ordinary man on the street that this will translate in the next three months into something good and something better?

If we don’t get empowered with knowledge in best global practice, it means we may be missing it somewhere. You will also agree with me that the idea is to be exposed to global best practice. It will also help you work either by synergy or work by new technique. I will give you example, something called venture capitalism. This is to saywith or without the government, BOI, we have worked with different institutionsworldwide to say Bayelsa has potentials, come to Bayelsa, we have select certain people you buy into their businesses, they have potentials but they don’t have capital. You buy into their business, work out relationship with them, you have a ratio. Now, this is a transaction that is outside government. These things are operating worldwide. If we didn’t go out, we wouldn’t know this. Now we came with a Special Purpose Vehicle, SPV, to say let’s have a company, a platform called the Bayelsa Trading Company.

Government is looking at  a seeming independent platform that would interface with the grassroots and they buy from them the problem of distributing; that way you have taken the risk for the people at the grassroots. There is also development and technique that we implement to help the process of development of SMEs.

Could you please tell us how many active SMEs are there in Bayelsa State and how many we are expecting in the next 2 years as part of ongoing effort to revive this sector and how many jobs will be generated?

I will start with the bottom. Jobs that will be created from the SME sector; a working figure of 2000 jobs minimum is expected but this is being very modest because there is a framework we have put before the governor. We believe that by the time other MDAs buy into it, it means that the number will spiral. So what we are saying clearly is that  the next time frame work of 24 months going by that framework we will be able to generate a minimum of 2000 jobs.

We have done our home work. The governor told us to open up the space. We have got some new inflow. It is a data base we will continue to update them.