Just lately in Abuja, a very formidable Vice President Kashim Shettima led a delegation that included Imo State Governor Hope Uzodinma and Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo to a gathering with Eric Trachtenberg, Government Director of Worldwide Cotton Advisory Committee, based mostly in Washington DC, in America.
Discussions centred on creating the cotton worth chain of farming, ginning, weaving and processing. On the finish of the assembly, Nigeria’s delegation felt sufficiently satisfied to announce that it will be capable of “create over 1.4 million jobs within the cotton/textile sector yearly.”
To realize this grandiose goal, Vice President Shettima“urged stakeholders to give you a roadmap for the revitalization of the cotton/textile sector in Nigeria,” noting “it’s time to work extra and discuss much less.” Throughout the problem thrown by the Vice President is the Freudian slip that this authorities got here with nary a thought nor plan for neither the cotton sub-sector nor even your complete textile sector that was the most important employer of labour in Nigeria, after authorities.
From the standard echo chamber, Governor Uzodinma mentioned “the chance created by the assembly is a brand new starting in Nigeria’s quest for industrial restoration and creation of jobs for our teeming youths in addition to a brand new alternative for a brand new partnership.”
Governor Sanwo-Olu additionally weighed in with an incredulous promise of readiness to off-take cotton grown in different components of Nigeria, on behalf of Lagos State that doesn’t personal a textile manufacturing unit! He would have been taken extra significantly if he got here to the assembly with some executives of textile factories which might be based mostly in Lagos. He put the cart earlier than the horse.
His gaffe is minor when in comparison with the ambition of the Federal Authorities that has no understanding or clear plan of methods to revive the textile sector. It’s baffling that Senator Adams Oshiomole, who spent his complete working profession within the textile business, was not on the federal government staff.
In the event that they did, they’d not be asking stakeholders to give you roadmaps, nearly late within the day. Additionally, they’d have identified that, relating to cotton as the one supply of base fabric for the textile business is like flying the proverbial MKO Abiola chook with one wing. Nigeria’s textile business makes use of cotton yarn to weave base fabric for its manufacturing. Nonetheless, it makes use of polyester, a petrochemical materials, excess of cotton. Even khaki cloth, historically woven out of cotton yarn, now has polyester as weft yarn to weave its base-cloth.
A rustic that grows a mere 27,000 tonnes of cotton yearly, and has no concrete plans to safe the lives of its farmers, and their farmlands, is constructing its citadel within the air, by making textile revitalization plans with out trying on the polyester, a derivable from its personal huge petrochemical that it has in additional than plentiful provide.
For context, Mali, the one African nation within the prime 10 record of cotton growers, grows 340,000 tonnes yearly. Will Nigeria import cotton to reinforce its meagre stock from Mali, or India, {that a} report of the Worldwide Cotton Affiliation (to not be confused with Worldwide Cotton Advisory Committee) signifies, grows 5,900,000 tonnes of cotton yearly?
It seems that the Federal Authorities is unwittingly making Nigeria a keen sufferer of the worldwide cotton enterprise, selling cotton as a sport changer for the clearly supine textile business, whereas neglecting the available petrochemical useful resource. There may be an excessive amount of ‘ad-hocism’ within the method to coverage formulation in Nigeria through the years.
The Worldwide Cotton Advisory Committee, shaped in 1972, is an affiliation of nations that develop, devour and commerce in cotton. What this implies, in easy English, is that this affiliation is shaped to maintain nations, like Nigeria, as main producers of commodities solely. If we might ask, what are the plans of the Federal Authorities to revive the textile business?
Two coverage or attitudinal paradigms want to alter within the ranks of Nigeria’s coverage makers: First is, the angle of working off the cuff by coverage makers, who hardly come to the planning desk with sufficient and acceptable preparation. Second, is the belief by the coverage makers that cotton is the only or main supply of base fabric of Nigeria’s near-comatose textile business. Polyester, sourced from petrochemical, should take the cake for that.
However, we commend the federal government for the brand new curiosity in reviving cotton/textile sector.
