Reviving Nigeria’s moribund cotton, textile industry

Nigeria, despite its rich supply of oil, is richly blessed with the environmental conditions required for food production. Although the nation has bungled the opportunities for some decades in the past, the new paradigm is bringing agriculture back into focus. The realisation of the urgency could be underscored by the priority given by the Goodluck […]

Nigeria, despite its rich supply of oil, is richly blessed with the environmental conditions required for food production. Although the nation has bungled the opportunities for some decades in the past, the new paradigm is bringing agriculture back into focus. The realisation of the urgency could be underscored by the priority given by the Goodluck Jonathan administration to agricultural transformation agenda as a major driver of the economic revival.
The tactical and strategic approaches to boosting agriculture are both needed and welcome at this time. First, Africa has been regarded as a frontier for feeding the world at this time. Secondly, Nigeria’s time to unlock its latent potential could no longer be postponed. The time is now. The reasons are many and varied. The food import bill of $11 billion per annum is a big burden on Nigeria: that needs to be shed now or never.
Moreover, circumstances and situations in many of the exporting countries are fluid, unpredictable, not dependable and highly unsustainable as sources of our national food supply. The drought of 2012 in Ukraine and US significantly, negatively affected the global wheat supply in terms of volume and price. It sent shock waves across national borders as prices were affected. Ukraine, at the height of the drought, not only discounted downward its yield expectation, but also made a policy pronouncement to ban export of wheat that year.
Because the impact of climate change is now a global phenomenon, it is important to prepare for it on a national scale. The national food balance sheet was put under severe test last year by the flood that affected many states significantly. Thankfully, the growth enhancement support (GES) provided a platform that enabled the federal government to reach the thousands of farmers with critical supports for dry season rice farming that targeted 264,000 ha of land, producing about 1,056,000 metric tons of rice more.
The population growth and the increasing need to revive our ailing industries warrant more ambitious interventions. We cannot achieve much by depending only on imported raw materials. To begin with, the jobs lost in the textile industry could be reversed by bringing back the cotton farming in the northern Nigeria. To revive the textile industry, the same old, poor-yielding varieties of cotton are not the way to go. The neigbouring Burkina Faso, in the recent past had done no less than 247,000 hectares of Bt cotton in 2011, creating jobs for 76,000 farmers.
Much more can be achieved in Nigeria as a way of bringing life back into the moribund textile industry. With improved yield per hectare of more than 18 per cent compared with the conventional varieties, increased income for farmers have a great prospect of bringing farmers back into cotton production. Nigeria has therefore to decide to support agricultural transformation, which will – in turn – lead to significant sectoral transformation in other agro-dependent sectors.
Let us imagine the number of jobs to be created along the entire cotton and textile value chain if the textile industry is revived. Let us imagine how competitive Nigeria will become in dress and garment business if locally produced fabrics are sold cheaper. Let us think of the spin-off coming from the core cotton-textile complex, in form of by-products that would serve as raw materials for livestock and poultry production.

Nigeria needs to rise up and seize the moment. It is time to stop dependence on other neighbouring countries for cotton and textile products. Let the cotton field be white once again. Let the closed doors of those textile companies fling open once again. Let jobs pour in. Let the yards of those exciting fabrics begin to be spun out. Let farmers have cause to cheer. Let Nigeria embrace the technology that is bringing millions into the pockets of poor farmers in Burkina Faso. Our textiles can rise again. We can clothe our citizens from cotton grown in Nigeria. The time to do that is now.
Dr. Olukayode Oyeleye is the Special Assistant on Media and Strategy, office of the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Abuja.