In Abuja, on Monday, fifth August, 2024, 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, primarily based in Washington DC, in America.
Discussions centred on growing 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 could be capable to “create over 1.4 million jobs within the cotton/textile sector yearly.”
To attain this grandiose goal, Vice President Shettima“urged stakeholders to provide you with 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 14-month-old authorities got here with nary a thought nor plan for neither the cotton sub-sector nor even the whole textile sector that was once the biggest employer of labour in Nigeria, after authorities.
From the standard echo chamber, Governor Uzodinma stated “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 critically if he got here to the assembly with some executives of textile factories which are primarily based 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 revive the textile sector. It’s baffling that Senator Adams Oshiomole, who spent his whole working profession within the textile trade, was not on the federal government crew.
In the event that they did, they might not be asking stakeholders to provide you with roadmaps, nearly late within the day. Additionally, they might have recognized that, concerning cotton as the one supply of base fabric for the textile trade is like flying the proverbial MKO Abiolabird with one wing. Nigeria’s textile trade makes use of cotton yarn to weave base fabric for its manufacturing. Nonetheless, it makes use of polyester, a petrochemical materials, way over 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 fortress 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 ample provide.
For context, Mali, the one African nation within the prime 10 checklist of cotton growers, grows 340,000 tonnes yearly. Will Nigeria import cotton to enhance 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 prepared sufferer of the worldwide cotton enterprise, selling cotton as a sport changer for the clearly supine textile trade, 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, fashioned 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 fashioned to maintain nations, like Nigeria, as major producers of commodities solely. If we could ask, what are the plans of the Federal Authorities to revive the textile trade?
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 applicable preparation. Second, is the idea by the coverage makers that cotton is the only real or main supply of base fabric of Nigeria’s near-comatose textile trade. Polyester, sourced from petrochemical, should take the cake for that.
Nonetheless, we commend the federal government for the brand new curiosity in reviving the cotton/textile sector.
