In Abuja, on Monday, 5th August, 2024, an overly ambitious Vice President Kashim Shettima led a delegation that included Imo State Governor Hope Uzodinma and Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo to a meeting with Eric Trachtenberg, Executive Director of International Cotton Advisory Committee, based in Washington DC, in America.
Discussions centred on developing the cotton value chain of farming, ginning, weaving and processing. At the end of the meeting, Nigeria’s delegation felt sufficiently convinced to announce that it would be able to “create over 1.4 million jobs in the cotton/textile sector annually.”
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To achieve this grandiose objective, Vice President Shettima“urged stakeholders to come up with a roadmap for the revitalization of the cotton/textile sector in Nigeria,” noting “it is time to work more and talk less.” Within the challenge thrown by the Vice President is the Freudian slip that this 14-month-old government came with nary a thought nor plan for neither the cotton sub-sector nor even the entire textile sector that used to be the largest employer of labour in Nigeria, after government.
From the usual echo chamber, Governor Uzodinma said “the opportunity created by the meeting is a new beginning in Nigeria’s quest for industrial recovery and creation of jobs for our teeming youths as well as a new opportunity for a new partnership.”
Governor Sanwo-Olu also weighed in with an incredulous promise of readiness to off-take cotton grown in other parts of Nigeria, on behalf of Lagos State that does not own a textile factory! He would have been taken more seriously if he came to the meeting with some executives of textile factories that are based in Lagos. He put the cart before the horse.
His gaffe is minor when compared to the ambition of the Federal Government that has no understanding or clear plan of how to revive the textile sector. It is baffling that Senator Adams Oshiomole, who spent his entire working career in the textile industry, was not on the government team.
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If they did, they would not be asking stakeholders to come up with roadmaps, almost late in the day. Also, they would have known that, regarding cotton as the only source of base cloth for the textile industry is like flying the proverbial MKO Abiolabird with one wing. Nigeria’s textile industry uses cotton yarn to weave base cloth for its production. However, it uses polyester, a petrochemical material, far more than cotton. Even khaki fabric, traditionally woven out of cotton yarn, now has polyester as weft yarn to weave its base-cloth.
A country that grows a mere 27,000 tonnes of cotton annually, and has no concrete plans to secure the lives of its farmers, and their farmlands, is building its castle in the air, by making textile revitalization plans without looking at the polyester, a derivable from its own vast petrochemical that it has in more than abundant supply.
For context, Mali, the only African country in the top 10 list of cotton growers, grows 340,000 tonnes annually. Will Nigeria import cotton to augment its meagre inventory from Mali, or India, that a report of the International Cotton Association (not to be confused with International Cotton Advisory Committee) indicates, grows 5,900,000 tonnes of cotton annually?
It appears that the Federal Government is unwittingly making Nigeria a willing victim of the international cotton business, promoting cotton as a game changer for the clearly supine textile industry, while neglecting the readily available petrochemical resource. There is too much ‘ad-hocism’ in the approach to policy formulation in Nigeria over the years.
The International Cotton Advisory Committee, formed in 1972, is an association of countries that grow, consume and trade in cotton. What this means, in simple English, is that this association is formed to keep countries, like Nigeria, as primary producers of commodities only. If we may ask, what are the plans of the Federal Government to revive the textile industry?
Two policy or attitudinal paradigms need to change in the ranks of Nigeria’s policy makers: First is, the attitude of working off the cuff by policy makers, who hardly come to the planning table with adequate and appropriate preparation. Second, is the assumption by the policy makers that cotton is the sole or major source of base cloth of Nigeria’s near-comatose textile industry. Polyester, sourced from petrochemical, must take the cake for that.
Nevertheless, we commend the government for the new interest in reviving the cotton/textile sector.
