Factors Influencing the Performance of Small and Medium Scale Enterprise in Urban Centres: A Case of Lagos, Nigeria

This study investigates the factors affecting the performance of SMEs in urban centres in the most economically important state of Nigeria which is Lagos State. This is as a result of the alarming situations of small and medium scale enterprise (SMEs) in Nigeria. They have fallen short of their expectation and are therefore not praiseworthy in their performances. A questionnaire was drafted to address the degree to which the lack of finance, poor marketing system, ban on importation, as well as division of labour influences the performance of SMEs using the working capacities of the firms as a measure. This study adopts the use of quantitative research with the use of 137 respondents that were selected through a purposive snowball technique precisely in Surulere and Mushin local government area of Lagos state. A descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data collected. The findings of this research reveals that the small and medium scale firms are face with problems of poor marketing systems and this reflects in their inability to increase their sales. The finding also shows that division of labour is not often the practice in small and medium scale firms and this decreases the specialization of labour and eventually results in the decline in output and revenue of the firms. Keywords: Small and medium scale enterprise, problems, performance, entrepreneur, Nigeria.