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By Azubuike Nwosu

The morning sun always meet Chima Chuks in the same way: choked in a cloud of cement dust and surrounded by a crowd of frustrated customers.

From his rented, cramped yard in the heart of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Chima operated Chuks-Chims Building Supplies, a block making factory and building materials store. Chima, 38, from Anambra State, was born in Uyo to parents who *died* soon after the civil war. He is a man of immense grit, but his business was trapped in a bottleneck. He specialized in producing concrete hollow blocks and distributing nails, head pans, iron rods and sundry items we see at building sites. However, because he relied on manual hand-mold casting, his small team of three workers could only produce between 150 and 200 blocks a day.

Since 2010, Uyo has experienced a boom in the housing market. New residential estates dot every corner while fancy commercial property adorn the high streets. In between, family homes are springing up rapidly. The demand for building materials is massive, but Chima’s manual process was too slow, and his blocks often lacked the uniform strength required for multi-storey projects. Contractors frequently walked away when he couldn’t meet their volume or quality standards. He desperately needed an automated block-molding machine and a delivery truck, but his savings were continuously swallowed by immediate operational costs.

The Turning Point

Recognizing that he was losing ground to larger distributors, Chima approached Access Bank for a SME intervention loan. Backed by two years of meticulously kept financial records and a solid business plan, he secured a credit facility tailored for business expansion. The injection of capital changed everything. Chima immediately acquired a semi-automated, high-capacity hydraulic block-molding machine and purchased a rugged, refurbished diesel delivery truck.

The Aftermath: Growth and Impact

Six months after securing the loan, Chuks-Chim Building Supplies was unrecognizable. The transformation spanned every area of his business: With the new hydraulic machine, daily production surged from 200 blocks to over 2,500 blocks per day. The machine compressed the concrete with precise pressure, drastically improving the structural integrity of the blocks. To keep up with the automated machinery, Chima expanded his team. He hired a machine operator, a maintenance technician, four extra mixing hands, and a professional truck driver. He grew his staff from 3 struggling manual labourers to 10 gainfully employed youths.

The new delivery truck eliminated his reliance on expensive third-party transporters. He could now deliver bulk orders directly to construction sites across neighbouring towns like Ikot Ekpene and Eket.

Today, Chima no longer watches customers walk away. His yard is organized, a clean signpost hangs at the entrance, and his brand is synonymous with premium-grade building materials. The bank loan didn’t just scale his business; it anchored his company as a vital player in building his community’s infrastructure.

‘’If my bank did not come to my help, I probably would have folded up’’, he chimed, wiping sweat off his forehead.

Nigerian government recognizes that MSMEs (micro-, small- and medium-enterprises) are the bedrock of the Nigerian economy and the biggest employer of labour in the country. The Small and Medium Enterprises Agency (SMEDAN) and the revised national policy on MSMEs classify businesses by number of employees and value of assets (excluding land and building). Thus, micro enterprises has less than 10 employees and assets under N5 million; small enterprises 10 to 49 employees and assets between N5 million and N50 million. Medium enterprises have up to 50 and 99 employees and assets between N50 million and N500 million.

According to the NBS and PwC Nigeria, there are between 39.6 million and 41.5 million MSMEs, with micro enterprises making up the vast majority (between 96% and 99.8%) and SMEs accounting for roughly 0.2% to 3.1%. This sector contributes to 50% of Nigeria’s GDP and represents approximately 80% of national employment, according to Augusto & Co, a Lagos-based rating agency. It is notable that alternative legal and tax definitions such as the Finance Act also considers annual turnover thresholds in classifying enterprises. For example, companies with a turnover of less than N100 million are classified as small.

A report prepared by Augusto & Co in 2026 says the MSMEs has huge funding gaps with many financial products from lending institutions mismatching the needs of the sector. However, every bank has dedicated MSMEs divisions. Despite the importance of MSMEs in the Nigerian economy, data from the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Credit Bureau Association of Nigeria (CBAN) indicate that only about 45 of the MSMEs successfully secure formal bank credit. The financing shortfall of Nigeria’s small businesses is estimated at $158 billion. Key barriers to accessing funding from banks include high interest rates; strict collateral requirements and informality and poor documentation.

But the federal government has made efforts to bring down these barriers. Government-owned institutions like Bank of Industry (BOI) and Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) disburse billions of Naira yearly in lower-interest intervention funds directly to thousands of enterprises. SMEDAN has also established specific initiatives to ease funding for MSMEs while some fintechs have also eased lending to the sector.