Why Nigerian textile factories are going under

Major players in the Cotton, Textiles and Garments (CTG) industry in Nigeria have frowned at what they call the continued decrease in the number of textile factories in the country.

Their worry is coming at a time the federal government is making moves to revamp the moribund sector.

President Muhammadu Buhari recently directed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to release enough money to the sector with the aim of revamping it. Textile experts who attended the just concluded 7th International Conference of the Textile Researchers Association of Nigeria (TRAN), which took place at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, observed that the sub-sector has become a shadow of itself following the closure of major factories from 175 companies in 1980 to less than 25 in 2019 - with the surviving ones operating far below installed capacity.

They identified poor energy supply, infrastructural decay and flooding of the Nigerian markets with cheap, smuggled imported textiles as some of the reasons factories in the country have continued to close down. And this, according to them, has forced Nigeria to spend more than $10 billion on importation of textiles on annual basis, despite the huge socio-economic losses that incurs on the country such as increase in unemployment, loss of foreign investment, loss of revenue from taxes and duties and increased importation of textiles materials to the nation’s detriment.

One of the experts and Director General of the Raw Materials Research and Development Council, Professor Hussaini D. Ibrahim, admitted that the industry in Nigeria is currently facing inherent challenges and needed to re-invent itself in view of the calls for environmentally friendly production facilities and economic requirements in the country.

The DG said RMRDC has helped the development of the sector through Techno-Economic Surveys of the Nigerian Textile

Industry updated in 1992, 1996, 1999, 2003, 2006 and 2009; collaboration with the Institute of Agricultural Research (IAR/ ABU, Zaria) to develop and release three long staple cotton seed varieties to farmers - Samcot 11, 12 and 13 - as well as boosting the supply of cotton lint to the Nigerian textile industry.

Others include capacity building training workshops for cotton farmers, and entrepreneurship training on industrial garment production for local and international (AGOA) markets. The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is a United States Trade Act, that seeks to enhance market access to the US for qualifying Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries.

The RMRDC boss observed that in order to enhance Nigeria’s comparative advantage in textiles production, there must be progressive timephased deletion of imported equipment, stressing the need for urgent action, particularly now that many textile plants are obsolete and in dire need of refurbishment as well as modernization.

To be able to develop domestic technology in the 21st century, he said it was imperative that the nation embarks on a programme to rationalize, standardize and reduce the variety of the machines and equipment imported into the country in order to facilitate local production of machine components and spares with considerable economies of scale.

To achieve this, he stressed the need for textile-related engineering science and technical institutes to work jointly with textile manufacturers on adaptation and reproduction of selected imported machinery and equipment.

FG wades in

Worried by the unappealing state of the nation’s CTG’s sector, the federal government through the Governor of Central Bank (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, said it was looking at injecting N100 billion as its intervention in the Cotton, Textile and Garment (CTG) value chain.

Emefiele spoke after the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the National Cotton Association of Nigeria (NACOTAN), Ginning Companies and Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association as well as Armed Forces of Nigeria, Nigeria Police, Paramilitary Institutions & National Youth Service Corps on the need to source their uniforms from local textile companies.

Our Agric Editor, who has been monitoring the sector, reports that the apex bank has already disbursed about N50 billion to the cotton and