‘Why investors avoid our cotton industry’

In this interview with, Alhaji Hamman Kwajaffa, the Director-General, Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association, a non-profit voluntary private sector organisation catering for the interests of textile, garment and textile-related manufacturers in Nigeria, spoke on the current problem plaguing the cotton and textile industry in Nigeria. Do you think the government should begin to look at industrialising […]

In this interview with, Alhaji Hamman Kwajaffa, the Director-General, Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association, a non-profit voluntary private sector organisation catering for the interests of textile, garment and textile-related manufacturers in Nigeria, spoke on the current problem plaguing the cotton and textile industry in Nigeria.

Do you think the government should begin to look at industrialising Nigeria using the cotton and textile industry as a springboard?

Honestly, that should be a priority for them because we had 200 textile mills in the 1970s and 1980s. That’s enough to show that there is industrialisation in place.

But now, we have fewer than 20 textile mills. It is an aberration. It shouldn’t happen in a country that is serious about the cotton industry. It is just because some of the policies are maybe working, but there have been a lot of somersaults on that. Now, they have just realised that the government has not been sitting down and implementing those policies. I think there should be policy implementation strategies this time around so that something can be done drastically for the industry to come back.

What the government is trying to do now is to at least create a council that will follow up on all these policies so that if there’s any interruption in government, there should be continuity, not that a new government will now introduce another thing entirely. This has been a problem in this country regarding the economy and policies. Something has to be done.

 

What caused the collapse of the cotton industry in Nigeria? 

I think it started with the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1986 or so when the Babangida government felt that farmers were producing cotton as a business; therefore, the government had no hand in the cotton business. But that was wrong because they were smallholder farmers and most of them were illiterate. They could not even read a pamphlet, and cotton is scientific. If there were no extension officers on the ground to guide them, they would run at a loss, and if they started running at a loss, they would move to other crops. So, as the farmers were left alone, they were confronted with a lot of challenges that crumbled the industry.

 

Given what this government plans to do, would anything be different from what happened in the past?

Yes, because protection is key. Protection of companies and farmers and those involved in the industry must be a priority. India has 4,000 textiles. It has never gone down. It is always going up since 1960. None has gone down because they are serious people. They took care of cotton farmers. Cotton farmers have their houses on the farms, and they deploy irrigation facilities throughout their production to have all-year-round production.

This is what military governments tried to do in Nigeria by building dams all over so that we can have irrigation. But there was no protection of the infrastructure. The dams were vandalised and the parks removed. Even the electricity that was sent to the dams was vandalised.  We should be concerned about protecting our infrastructure in this country.

 

Assumptions are that most of the cotton farms suffer from land degradation; is that also a problem?

Yes, because investors came; they wanted to invest in cotton in Zamfara State and took soil samples to India for testing. They found out that the land was degraded and could not be used. The investors refused to come because nothing had been done by the government in that area to deal with soil degradation. And now, people shy away.

Last year, there were complaints of some seeds not germinating. 

Yes. Throughout last year, the imported seed didn’t germinate. That was a massive seed loss for the farmers. In some countries, the importers would be jailed.

 

What about the seeds developed by the research institutes?

Nobody is looking at them or patronising them. They prefer to go and buy and get the percentage, whatever they want to put in their pockets. Nobody cares about the farmer. Is this what we want in this country? Honestly, we need to do a lot more. A lot of work has to be done. 

 

What about the BT (GMO) cotton?

The fight has been on food in terms of BT, biotechnology products. But our own is that it is cloth. It has nothing to do with food. So it should be deployed, it should be allowed. 

 BT cotton is okay for us. Farmers will have a high yield and the bollworms will no longer destroy the plant, so they will grow very well. That’s the kind of thing we want. But then, because the price is high, the farmer cannot afford the BT seeds. So the government has to come in and protect these areas, and so many things. First, they can buy for them and continue. And subsequently, the farmers will be buying from their own pockets. But the first one is that the government has to do something.