Secrets Reporters
The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) exists to help the country’s small businesses overcome the infrastructure and financing barriers that keep them small.
Documents in our possession that peeps into SMEDAN’s finances has found ₦1,967,239,964.81 nearly ₦2 billion in contract and cash-management irregularities across eight separate findings, a sum that raises serious questions about how an agency meant to model good business practice is managing its own.
The largest finding: ₦627,363,914.81 in store items never taken in their financial records, goods procured with public funds that were never properly logged into the agency’s inventory records, a basic control failure that 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 which is 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 which a government finding against SMEDAN termed irregular while ₦60,000,000.00 more 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 West Africa country’s president, to his father, who accepted his nomination into the agency, stated a source to us.
One of SMEDAN’s core mission 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 proper ledger charge, or specify completion periods on ₦332.5 million in contracts, has fallen short of the standard it is funded will teach others.
