The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria exists to help the country’s small businesses overcome the infrastructure and financing barriers that keep them small.
Documents in our possession looking into SMEDAN’s finances have found ₦1,967,239,964.81 — nearly ₦2 billion — in contract and cash-management irregularities across eight separate findings. The sum raises serious questions about how an agency meant to model good business practice is managing its own affairs.
The largest finding is ₦627,363,914.81 in store items never taken onto the financial records: goods bought with public funds that were never properly logged in the agency’s inventory. That basic control failure makes it impossible to verify what was actually received.
A further ₦440,000,000.00 was tied to violations of due process in the award of contracts. ₦346,581,300.00 sat as unretired cash advances — money handed out that was never accounted for or returned. ₦332,500,000.00 in contracts were awarded with no completion period specified at all, removing any basis for holding the contractor to a delivery timeline.
₦99,794,750.00 was paid for monitoring exercises that a government finding against SMEDAN termed irregular, while another ₦60,000,000.00 was tied to further contract-award irregularities. ₦47,500,000.00 went to a contractor found ineligible for the award. And ₦13,500,000.00 involved an irregular valuation of unserviceable motor vehicles.
Charles Odii has served as Director General/CEO of SMEDAN since April 2022, when he was introduced by Mr Seyi Tinubu, son of the country’s president, to his father, who accepted his nomination to the agency, a source told us.
One of SMEDAN’s core missions is teaching Nigeria’s small-business owners the record-keeping, procurement discipline and financial accountability needed to grow sustainably. It is not clear how an agency that cannot itself keep ₦627 million in store items on a proper ledger, or specify completion periods on ₦332.5 million in contracts, can meet the standard it is funded to teach others.