‘How Government Can Revive The Textile Industry’

  IN the 80s up till early 90s, the textile industry in Nigeria was rated third largest in Africa, after Egypt and South Africa. In those days, it was the largest employer of labour in the manufacturing sector of the country. Available record has it that, between 1986 and 1991, the sector accounted for 25 percent of total manufacturing employment, with over 300,000 people directly employed in the sub-sector.
     However, in recent times, the once vibrant and lucrative industry has encountered a number of challenges, resulting in very high production costs for those who still manage to be in business. Many textile companies have closed shop and abandoned textile factories are decaying from lack of use, thereby leading to increased unemployment and poverty rates.

    Today, the Kantin Kwari Textile Market in Kano, which is rated among major textile markets in Africa, with a daily turnover running into several millions of naira, is increasingly flooded with imported textiles. Findings revealed that at its peak, Kano alone had about 31 textile companies, which were all functional and operating in full capacity. By 2012, only six of them operate, with just about three operating fully.

    While some former workers of the textile industry blame cheap imports from China for the collapse of the sector, others are of the opinion that mismanagement and a lack of genuine government support is responsible for the collapse of the industry.

   Reacting to the sorry state of textile industry in Nigeria, the CEO of Silky Touch Emporium Victor Okoli noted that, though current and past administrations have made efforts towards the revival of the textile industry, there has really been no genuine and realistic intervention in the sector.

     “The fashion industry in Nigeria is what I call neighborhood tailoring, because our textile industry is not healthy. If we have fashion industry in Nigeria, Chinese products won’t be everywhere. If we do a good calculation of how many shirts and trousers we produce in Nigeria every year, it cannot cloth the smallest state in Nigeria. If you calculate how many shoes that are produced in Nigeria in a year and how many shoes that are worn in Nigeria in a year, it cannot satisfy one local government.”

    Okoli observed that part of the problems is lack of production and not patronage as claimed by textile workers.

    “The point is that they cannot produce; they don’t have the technical know how, they don’t have the means. No bank can even give anybody money to start a textile industry,” he said.

      For the textile industry to come alive, Okoli said, government must pay attention to the sector and possibly carry out a comprehensive assessment of the existing factories in a bid to ascertain the true state of the industry.  

    “You know what I said to the government, I said, ‘have you checked this issue very well?’ What government is actually supposed to find out is if their problem is lack of production or lack of patronage? If they say its lack of patronage, that the foreign ones are making them not to sell, I will say it’s not true.

    “To prove them wrong, government should send one of their agencies to go to those factories and audit their products; lets see how many bales of clothes that they produced that they couldn’t sell. Let them go and show it to them; you will see that the warehouse is empty. So, if the warehouse is empty, why are you saying that you are having problem with selling,” he quizzed.

     Okoli said that, for the textile industry to bounce back, government must be ready to lead patronage, urging investors in the sector to desist from producing high fashion materials, which put them in direct competition with foreign products.

     “Let them stop producing high fashion materials; let them produce fabrics for the Custom, fabrics for the Police, Immigration and all government agencies... you will see they will not meet with the demand. Let them produce the fabrics and supply to all those agencies; let them go and sew; that way, the textile factories will be busy. So, if government truly wants to revive the textile industry, they must create opportunity for the products.”

      The investors on the other hand, should cultivate the habit of reinvesting in the business, which Okoli described as the best possible way to determine growth in the sector.     

    “How many times have they invested in their business? How many times have they upgraded their machines? How many times have they hired young fabric designers and not fashion designers? A lot of us believe that fashion ends with fashion designing, no. Before it becomes fashion, it was a fabric. For the textile industry to function well you need fabric designers and milling engineers; these are the real people that produce the fabrics. As for now, all these things are not in place.”

    The fashion entrepreneur is of the opinion that government has a role to play in ensuring that fabrics produced by the textile factories are in line with the need of the country and available raw materials.

   “If we want to produce wool, then we are deceiving ourselves because we don’t have people that farm sheep here; we have to determine the texture of the hair of the sheep to determine the texture of the wool we are looking for. If we say cotton, the cotton industry in the north is dead. We can’t talk of silk; silk is gotten from cocoon and spider makes it; it’s not there. So, there are so many problems to be sorted out,” he noted.

    To him, the Nigeria’s petrochemical industry has a role to play in the on going effort to revive the textile industry.

    “100 percent of the fabrics that Chinese send to Nigeria, both in shoes, leather and fabrics, are petrochemical bye products and we can only get that from petrochemical industry. For now, it is not developed yet. So, when we talk about growing the fashion industry, it’s a very long way. But if we can get it right, it will employ over ten million people,” he said.

     While stating that the ‘N20 billion’ intervention fund from government has yielded no result, Okoli observed that, “after four to five years, they will come again. If you ask them about the money they got before, they will tell you, ‘importation is killing us.’ Are they the only people producing things in Nigeria? Why is importation not killing the cable industry? Why is it not killing the beverage industry? Can anybody go and import Milo into Nigeria? They produce good Milo here and people are buying it; good Bournvita, people are buying it; good cable, people are buying it; good beer, people are buying,” he noted.

     He noted that the near collapse of the textile industry has affected the growth of the fashion industry in the country, urging government to pay attention to the sector, which he says has the capacity to diversify the nation’s economy.

     “I have not seen a fashion industry in Nigeria and fashion industry is the highest employer of labour anywhere in the world. You know why? Most things that have to do with fashion need human beings to work with it. There are no automated ways of ironing a cloth; somebody must do it. It’s unlike producing a phone or anything electronics; you can programme it and go home, the next morning you come and pack them. But you can’t do that with fashion,” he said.

Culled from http://www.ngrguardiannews.com