Assessment of Global COVID-19 on SMEs: An Emphasis on Businesses at the Technological Incubation Centre, Nigeria

Background

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2020), noted that more than half of SMEs now face chronic losses, more enterprises will go into extinction if not supported. In the same survey, it was empirically noted that goods and services are targeted by the pandemic. The measures laid down to contain the widespread of the global covid-19 are 2meter social distancing; use of face mask and sanitizer; unnecessary movement as stipulated by the presidential task force which was constituted by the President Muhammadu Buhari on the 9th of March, 2020 (State House, 2021). Meanwhile, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, (2020) the first case was recorded in Nigeria on the 27th of February, 2020. As at 6th August 2020, 18, 793, 522 cases of COVID-19 have been recorded globally (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 2020), with Africa recorded 21, 631 deaths out of the global 707, 715 while Nigeria shared 927 deaths which has rose to 2163 by August 4, 2021. In the case of Nigeria, the disease got to the country through an infected Italian citizen who got in contact with a Nigerian citizen who was subsequently infected with the coronavirus. Hence, the virus began to spread through Lagos state, Ogun state, Abuja, Oyo state to other parts of the country (Ozili, 2020).

Small and Medium Scale Enterprises(SMEs) has proven to be a major tool adopted by the developed nations to attain socio- economic development (Opafunso & Adepoju, 2014). The total number of persons employed by the SMEs sector as at December, 2013 stood at 59,741,211, representing 84.02 percent of the total labour force. While, female entrepreneurs accounted for 22.75percent in SMEs. Employment generated in Oyo State SMEs accounted 147,200 (male) and 59,501 (female) both representing 10.86 percent (Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria, 2013).

The popularity of TICs in the globe led Babangida's regime in Nigeria to embrace TICs in 1988 as a veritable blueprint for propelling SMEs. The Federal Government formally developed the nation's TICs in 1992 under the auspices of the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme. The pilot centre in Lagos, was founded at Agege in 1993 (Oyedele et al., 2020) in (Bubou & Okrigwe, 2011). This was followed by Kano and Aba in 1994. The enactment of Decree No. 5 of 1995, assigned the oversight and coordination of TICs to the aforementioned ministry with effect from July 1995 (Akhuemonkhan, Raimi, Patel, & Fadipe, 2014).

Main Focus Of The Article

The study’s broad objective is the assessment of Covid-19 on SMEs with emphasis on businesses at the technological incubation Centre, Nigeria.