Does the Performance of SMEs in Nigeria Matter? Issues and Challenges

The issues of small and medium enterprises' performance have become a serious debate both in the developing and emerging economies.The objective of the study is to examine the issues and challenges of the performance of SMEs in Delta State, Nigeria.The paper review intends to fill the existing gaps in the areas of entrepreneurship.The study aims to examine the issues, problems, and challenges of the performance of entrepreneurship in Delta State, and how it has contributed to unemployment in Nigeria at large.The issues, problems, and challenges of the SMEs have been a serious area of debate for many years in the developing economies.Due to recommendations by recent studies, this study aims to contribute to the Nigerian researchers.This paper adopted both informative and explanatory approaches in reviewing SMEs issues that have been an existence in Nigeria for several years.The study has identified that the challenges of entrepreneurship development have made it very difficult for SMEs to grow in Nigeria.The findings found that entrepreneurial mindset, entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, entrepreneurial risk-taking, and entrepreneurial innovativeness would significantly affect SME performance if validated.Additionally, the study conceptually established that entrepreneurial opportunity recognition and SME performance, risk-taking and SME performance, as well as innovativeness and SME performance would solve the problems of unemployment in Nigeria.Therefore, it is recommended that managers of SMEs should use entrepreneurial intention as avenue to recognize business opportunities, take calculated risks and increase investments in innovativeness, in order to achieve optimum performance, and boost profitability and competitiveness in domestic and international market scenes.