Over the years the Nigerian government has come up with a number of antipoverty programmes aimed at fighting poverty by financing her growth induced sector- SMEs, yet, the country is still witnessing rising levels of poverty, corruption, unemployment, low human capital development, inadequate commercial bank credit, high lending rate and low standard of education, thus, affecting the performance of small scale enterprises. In other to address the conundrum, this study examines the effect of government antipoverty programmes on small and medium enterprises’ performance in Nigeria using econometric regression model of the Ordinary Least Square (OLS). From the regression analysis, the result showed that government antipoverty programmes, corruption, unemployment, human capital development, capital, lending rate and education conformed to the a priori expectations of the study and were statistically significant in explaining the SMEs’ performance in Nigeria. The study recommends that: In order to enhance the success of government antipoverty programmes in Nigeria, the programme should be implemented through the local government on the platform of cooperative societies so that the target population will benefit from it. A blueprint for handling corrupt officials should be embedded in the policy framework of the programme before implementation. The programme should be targeted at unemployed youths with real identity rather than sinking back the funds into the pockets of corrupt officials. Every intending beneficiary should be subjected to training/skill acquisition programme and occasional workshop in the line of trade he/she wants to venture into. Adequate funding at a good lending rate should be provided for any beneficiary of the programme in order to enhance the performance of the business in Nigeria.
This study examines the effect of retrenchment on employees’ service delivery: a study of ten districts of Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) in Southeast Nigeria. The study was necessitated by the alarming rate of retrenchment across various industries in Nigeria particularly the energy sector that is a major driver of economic growth and development in the country. The poor service delivery of the sector has been a teething problem to both the citizens and organizations that need their services. With the recent restructuring of the sector and emergence of Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) with its attendant retrenchment, it becomes more constricting what the service delivery of the retrenchment survivors will be. This study therefore, modelled variables like employee work load, longer working hours, pay cut, depression and anxiety and restructuring of work to ascertain how they have influenced on employees’ service delivery in Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) using an econometric regression model of the Ordinary Least Square (OLS). Findings revealed that with the exception of longer working hours that were not significant, all other variables (employee work load, pay cut, depression and anxiety; and restructuring of work) had significant effect on employees’ service delivery. Based on the findings, the study recommends that electricity distribution companies should adequately adjust employees work load, increase survivors pay, restore confidence on the survivors and ensure work place harmony during restructuring of work to enable them improve their service delivery.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.