Re: Stimulating patronage for local fabric
An interview granted to Daily Trust of Monday, June 4 by the Minister of State for Industries, Aisha Abubakar, portrayed President Muhammadu Buhari’s determination to revive the Nigeria’s comatose textile industry as a matter of top priority, with the Minister herself chairing a Presidential committee on cotton, textile and garment. From the interview, it is […]
An interview granted to Daily Trust of Monday, June 4 by the Minister of State for Industries, Aisha Abubakar, portrayed President Muhammadu Buhari’s determination to revive the Nigeria’s comatose textile industry as a matter of top priority, with the Minister herself chairing a Presidential committee on cotton, textile and garment.
From the interview, it is understandable the committee, had fully identified factors bedeviling the industry and fashioning permanent solutions to the sector’s hydra headed problems. I wish to compliment the Honourable Minister’s discourse in some aspects.
As is the success with local rice production, I appeal on Nigerians to support equally the cultivation of cotton to meet demand from several garment and textile factories coming up due to the revival plan. The economic council should please extend recovery of the textile industry intervention fund to twenty years, after a 5 year grace period. This is because the sector suffered total neglect for sixteen years. For development financing to yield holistic results, adequate time is needed for the sector to stabilize itself because relevant staff training alone needs enough time. Our praise goes to the Minister and the National Assembly in reviving the sector and establishing the CTG Council respectively. Genuine stakeholders should be canvassed to judiciously administer the over N130 billion textile levy waiting to be injected into the revival of the CTG value chain. On their parts, contracted agro-allied companies should desist from supplying farmers with inferior and expired cotton seeds and attendant inputs or be branded as economic saboteurs. It is also pertinent that in order to save costs and minimize risks with foreign investors into the sector should be encouraged to be strategic partners interested old investors in the sector.
As a manufacturer, I have been urging, praying, advocating, lobbying and soliciting for an industrial revolution. I had witnessed ups and downs in the textile industry for more than forty years, but with President Buhari’s laudable scheme to push Nigerians back to farms, the platform for massive production and processing of cotton- the back bone of the textile industry is beefing up the confidence of foreign and local investors on the sector. The combined efforts of Mr. President, the Economic Council, the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Bank of Industry and the Ministry of Industry to attain productivity status for Nigeria is impacting positively despite sabotage within and without. Hon Aisha Abubakar’s interview rekindled hope and instilled confidence in stakeholders in the CTG sector in particular and Nigeria’s economy in general.
President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) came on board with a comatose textile industry; when we were importing cotton products which entailed importing poverty and exporting job opportunities, corruption and all malaise of manufacturing crimes. For sixteen years the sector suffered total neglect, which triggered unemployment because the textile industry offered numerous of skilled and unskilled job opportunities to all ages irrespective of gender. In 1999 there were about 800 diverse industries in Kano alone. By 2015 there were less than 200 operating at below 50 percent capacity.
Saidu Dattijo Adahama is a Kano- based industrialist