Reps to amend SMEDAN law to empower artisans, market women

The House of Representatives on Wednesday commenced public hearing on a bill to empower artisans and craftsmen to enable them contribute to economic growth of the country.
The bill proposed repeal and re-enactment of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria Act 2003.
The agency was established through the Act to coordinate and facilitate the development of micro, small and medium enterprises.
Ahmed Kaita, the sponsor of the bill, said the need to empower and protect a massive population with the capacity to spur the country’s economy motivated him to sponsor the bill.
Kaita said: “For any economy to get it right, it must first of all empower that working population which is massive, those particular people that we are referring to are large in number and can spur growth.
“There is no government policy that will lead the country out of this economic doldrums without considering these artisans, craftsmen, market women and all those people that contribute to the economy.”
The lawmaker argued that most developing countries that were at par with Nigeria were able to get it right because they were able to address the issues that the bill sought to address.
Kaita said: “That is by protecting them, empowering them and makes them compete with other projects in other countries.
“The intent is very simple; the current government has made it very clear that it is going to look inward.
“We are not going to be importing things; we will try to protect our borders, so that we can spur growth from within.
“You can only do that if you incorporate the very people that will make such an economic impact to the economy.
“These are the category of people that are abandoned and least considered in the economy.
“So this bill seeks to secure their employment by giving them all necessary incentives so that they can generate improved system and employ more hands into their businesses.”
Kaita said that he was inspired by what was happening in Bangladesh, China, India, South Africa and many other countries where a large chunk of their population fell within the category.
According to him, the government deliberately targets those people for it to spur growth and they are seeing the result.
Kaita said: “So if we must get it in Nigeria, we cannot allow such a population to go like that. We have to invest in them for us to have economic prosperity.”
Kaita emphasised that the existing SEMDAN Act only captured a little percentage of the total people who were supposed to move the economy.
He said: “There are only small and medium scales; so, what happens to craftsmen, market women, artisan and these constitute the large number.
“If you sum the micro economics of this people, they constitute more than 60 per cent to 70 per cent of what is happening in Nigeria.
“Yet amazingly, they were not captured in the previous enactment.”
Earlier, the Speaker of the House, Yakubu Dogara, had said the bill was expected to promote the diversification policy of the current administration.
Represented by the Deputy Minority Leader, Chukwuka Onyema, Dogara said the bill would encourage self-employment, thereby reducing poverty and raising the standard of living in the country.