Reviving the textile industry
The planned revival of the textile industry in Nigeria is a strategy in the right direction of improving the economy, creating jobs and funding the industries necessary for appropriate industrialization of our country. Most of the textile industries in Nigeria fulfill the spatial criteria for inclusive national development because they are located mainly in Kano, Kaduna, Aba and Ikeja. One only prays that unlike previous plans to revive the textile industry, the money this time will not be stolen , mismanaged and in the word of a former Vice President “misapplied” whatever that was supposed to mean. The textile industry in Nigeria presents us great opportunities for backward integration to the raw materials being sourced locally. Before oil, the economy of northern Nigeria was based on production of groundnuts and cotton. The two produce were largely exported but by the 1960s, textile mills sprang up in Kano and Kaduna providing jobs for thousands of people. Also oil mills for crushing cotton seeds and groundnuts also became common feature of the economy. Alas all these disappeared gradually when government’s foreign reserves no longer depended on agricultural produce but on commission paid to our government by foreign oil companies.
In the southern part of our country, there were textile industries in places like Aba, Ado Ekiti and Ikeja which relied on imported cotton yarn from Egypt and the Sudan. Instead of depending on increased local cotton production, the southern textile mills did not enjoy the advantage of backward integration even though cotton could also be grown in transitional zones in the south before reaching the rain forest. Historically, there existed thriving textile native industries owned usually by women. These women provided school uniforms for their children in their ancient looms behind their homes. Cotton harvested from their farms were manually turned into yarns using their own fabricated tools. These women also had dyes gotten from plants and in Yoruba land for instance, Osogbo was famous for its dyes even though most women were historically involved in the textile and dye industries. Thank God the importation of British textiles did not completely kill the local industry which still survives in Ilorin, Oyo, Iseyin, and northern Oyo generally. They also survive in Ondo, some parts of Igbo land and in Sokoto, Kano and Borno. On important occasions our people are still decked in these traditional textile apparels. The point I am making is that unlike southern and eastern parts of Africa where before the coming of the white man there, their native attire were mainly animal hides and skins.
When Governor General Sir Reginald Wingate of Sudan In 1925 decided to irrigate vast area of the Sudan for agricultural development especially the growing of cotton and other produce, Nigerians were sought after for work in the Al Jazirah ( Gezira) scheme. Most of the workers who built the scheme were Nigerians stranded on their way to or return from the hajj. They have now made the Sudan home and constitute a large portion of the population of the Sudan usually referred to as “Fellata”. The Al jazirah scheme contributes more than 50% to the economy of the Sudan. Imagine what we can do if our surplus and underutilized labour is harnessed for cotton production on irrigated farms to satisfy our domestic textile need and for export.
Read Also: Nigerians hail Senate over proposed five-year ban on textiles
Countries like India, China, the USA and Great Britain itself started their journey of industrialization from the textile industry. At the onset of industrialization in the USA, cotton based on unpaid free black labour was king. Industrial Britain grew from its textile mills in Lancashire before the development of heavy industries in Birmingham. The reason for this is that the machines needed for textile mills were not as complex as those of heavy industries. Imagine if Nigeria can provide all her textile needs for everything from what we wear to furnishings, the number of millions of our people who will be in gainful employment. There are probably more than 150 million people who will need clothes of different types. Millions of school children who will need uniforms. The police, customs, immigration and the military and other uniformed forces would need to be provided for. What about beddings, window blinds, flags and so on. Imagine the millions of tailors who will find jobs working for fashion houses or for themselves. We have this blessing of a huge market. What seems absent and missing is somebody or government to mobilize our people to translate the latent force in our country to economic reality. Imagine if we ban importation of all textiles and force ourselves to rely on and use what we have. Within 10 years, we will be one of the strongest economies in the world and we will not have to beg Donald Trump to extend the AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act) put in place by the Clinton administration to encourage African countries to export their products to the USA under most favorable terms.
I am not suggesting a policy of autarky. Why not? China closed its borders for more than a decade before joining the global economy as a force to be reckoned with. In terms of purchasing power parity China is the biggest economy in the world today. Of course with our known slothfulness and celebration of ethnicity, mediocrity rather than meritocracy, we do not have the discipline needed to leapfrog from the economic doldrums we find our country to a modern economy. But in the advancing world of knowledge economy and moving away from dependence on hydrocarbons as sources of energy, we will soon find out we have no economy unless we mobilize to prepare for a future which will need less of our oil and gas because of their deleterious and abusive impact on the environment causing severe strain on global climate.
Since our avowed aim is to diversify our economy away from oil and gas and to replace it with agriculture and other sustainable industries, textile industries fit appropriately our strategy. Firstly, most of the textile mills are state corporations owned and even where there are substantial foreign participation in ownership there should be no hindrance in local buy in through the stock exchange. There may even be the need to build new mills if the old ones are too decrepit that it will be waste of resources repairing them. By now we ought to have learnt our lessons from the perennial waste of millions of dollars on petroleum refineries that should have been sold or scrapped a long time ago but still continue to guzzle millions of dollars because of deep state corruption. We can also learn from the Al jazirah scheme in the Sudan by government getting directly involved in the production of cotton for home industries and export of its surplus. Where there are individual farmers growing the stuff, government particularly state governments and not the federal government should provide loans to assist them. This may also be the time to bring back the old cotton commodity board to guarantee fixed and profitable prices to producers so that they would not be faced with gyration of prices which may discourage farmers.
What one has suggested for cotton can also apply to cocoa, rubber, palm oil and palm kernel, groundnuts, Shea butter, cashew, maize, sugar cane and soya beans. We ought to have a policy of adding value to our agricultural products. We have the land and water and abundant sunshine; all we need to do is put our thinking caps on and make what potentialities given to us by God come into reality.
As JF Kennedy the former president of the USA famously said “The work of government will not be finished in one administration and not even in our own, but let us begin”.
This is my charge to this current administration at the federal and state levels