BimbolaOyesola, [email protected]
With the price of crude oil falling around $30 per barrel, the National Union of Textile Garment and Tailoring Workers (NUTGTWN) has restated that Nigeria must immediately opt for diversification and industrialisation.
This is even as the union urged the Federal Government to institute a structured, consistent and sustained policy framework for accelerated growth in the manufacturing sector.
The union also at its 12th Quadrennial Delegates’ Conference held in Abuja last week ratified the retirement of its general secretary, Issa Aremu, as the incumbent president, John Adaji, got another term of four years to lead the union.
In his address at the conference, themed, “Labour and Industry (Textile) in the Next Decade,” Aremu, vice president IndustriAll, harped on industrialisation is the key to economic recovery.
“The advantages of industrialisation include lessening of dependency on imports, thus saving scarce foreign exchange.
“Where the economy is diversified, industrialisation serves as a source of foreign exchange. It also serves as a source of employment for greater number of the population and invariably reduces income poverty,” he said.
He opined that textile industry was a strategic non-oil industry, which, in spite of its depressed state, is still largest private sector employer of labour after government.
According to him, at a time, when the price of crude oil is falling and there is so much talk about diversification, its time Nigeria revisited basic industries such as textile, adding that textiles has been the cornerstone of economic development of most nations.
He said, “The industry has been in steep decline due to lack of electricity, smuggling and lack of patronage. This free fall has been slightly moderated in recent years by series of interventions including the Cotton, Textile and Garment (CTG) intervention fund managed by the Bank of Industry (BOI). It is estimated that Nigeria spends over $2 billion on imported fabrics as the crisis in the industry has been aggravated by high local production cost and cheap import from Asia.”
He said the union is demanding massive patronage of locally produced textiles by MDAs and the establishment of the Ministry of Textile as it has been done in India, China and Pakistan.
He said the objective of the proposed ministry would be regular upgrading of the textile value chains, improve on labour productivity, maximize value-addition and formulate strategies and programme to enable the textile sector to meet the challenges to attain global competitiveness.
Among other things, the foremost labour leader demanded for a strategic action towards combating smuggling and counterfeiting of textile products, setting up of Presidential task-force, improve electricity supply, training and retraining of the Work Force as well as full revival of textile industry for Nigeria to be well positioned to trade in fabrics and benefit from the $3 trillion Africa free trade agreement.
“Nigeria needs a radical departure from the age long unhelpful neoliberal economics of liberalization, factory closures and export orientation to urgent diversification, import substitution, re-Industrialization and beneficiation. This is the time to re-inflate the economy as commendably being done by the CBN and not a panicky contraction as wrongly being proposed by the Ministry of Finance,” he stressed.
In his address immediately after the election, the President, John Adaji commended the federal government for the commitment to the revival of Textile Industry through its various policy initiatives such as Cotton, Textile and Garment (CTG) Policy, development financing through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Bank of Industry (BOI).
“We appreciated President Muhammadu Buhari for the signing of the Executive Order 003 on support for local content in procurement, forex ban for textile importers, closure of borders to check smuggling, amongst other important decisions to salvage the industry,” he said.