Political Leadership and Infrastructural Growth Towards Small and Medium Enterprises Sustenance in Nigeria: An Empirical Investigation

Abstact; The study examined the impact of political leadership on infrastructural growth towards Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) growth in Nigeria. The study’s specific objectives were to ascertain whether political leadership has an impact on the infrastructural growth of transportation, health, education, social and urban infrastructures in Nigeria. Survey design was adopted; thus, the study used a structured questionnaire to gather the primary data. The instrument has 4 4-point “Likert” scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree for positively worded items. Data from the survey were analysed by obtaining the mean and modal scores. The t-test was conducted, while estimation was done using SPSS statistical packages. Outcome of the investigations show that political leadership has impact on all the investigated structures and that political corruption is linked to all the decay in infrastructures and inadequacy of the infrastructures to sustain SMEs in Nigeria, the study concludes that all forms of growth in infrastructures of any country, Nigeria inclusive, depend to a large extent on the capacity of its leadership to facilitate, entrench, and sustain good political governance. Recommendations from the study include, among others, that political leaders in Nigeria should make infrastructural growth and SMEs sustenance a compelling part of their promises, upon which the populace should demand performance.