While acknowledging that stories like Cosmas Maduka, Sunday Egede and David Ojei are encouraging and motivating, they are the exception and not the rule. Like many Nigerians operating in the informal sector, David tried several businesses including running a barbershop, a failed supermarket, re-sale of ogbono seeds in Lagos, which also crashed before he returned to the retail business. Sunday initially served as an apprentice at his brother’s provisions store. In a similar manner, the duo of Sunday Egede and David Ojei who formed the successful Prince Ebeano supermarket chain emerged from a precarious situation. One example is Cosmas Maduka of Coscharis Group who started out as an automobile apprentice and now runs one of the most successful luxurious car distribution companies in Nigeria. Nevertheless there are the rare success stories that emerge as roses from the proverbial concrete. MSMEs have an uphill battle navigating the already difficult business environment in Nigeria and are excluded from the few opportunities that exist within it.

These businesses are the fabric of Nigeria’s society, and our country’s economic survival is very much dependent on their collective survival. Take Nigeria’s MSME sector, which makes up more than 90 percent of businesses in Nigeria, from hair salons to food vendors, market stalls, corner shops, airtime kiosks, roadside hawkers and beyond. So when something grows from it we can celebrate the anomaly, but we must also ask ourselves what would happen if the environment was fertile, and more enabling? How much more growth would we bear witness to, how much more success? Concrete is not an enabling environment and in it, nothing can take roots or bear fruit. Very little grows from concrete, a hard structure without soil, nutrients or water.

The rose that grows from concrete