A Trust TV documentary released on November 17, titled: “The last cotton factory in Funtua”, accompanied by a Daily Trust report titled: “The resilient thread: Funtua’s last standing cotton factory” the following week, evoked a sense of nostalgia for Nigeria’s past glory, reminding us all of the good old days, when the cotton/textile industry made enormous contributions to the economy and was the second largest employer of labour after government.

Today, cotton farming appears to have been neglected, along with the large value chain in textile production. The dozens of textile mills that dotted parts of Nigeria have since crumbled, their buildings, now mere carcasses left for thousands of retired and laid off employees to reminisce of the once rainy days.

The report on Funtua’s last standing cotton company was both inspiring and heart-breaking. It captured the resilience of the factory owners, hanging by a thread, making sure production never ceases, yet faced with the myriad challenges that drowned other factories. But both reports should not be seen as a call to save just one company, but a clarion call for the federal and state governments to work together to revamp an industry that has faced decades of neglect and failed promises since 1999.

There is no doubt that Nigerian governors and regional groups such as the New Nigeria Development Company Limited (NNDC) and the Odu’a Investment Company Limited must share the blame in the collapse of the cotton/textile industry. The governors, particularly in northern Nigeria appear to have been carried away by the easy and steady allocations coming from crude oil and therefore, neglected other regional revenue streams such as agriculture and in particular, cotton production and its value chain. This situation has now become a national tragedy that has given rise to high unemployment and criminal activities, especially in the North.

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With little intervention and sincerity of purpose, we have seen the potential for growth in the cotton/textile industry. For instance, when the past administration of Muhammadu Buhari between 2018 and 2019 listed cotton production in the anchor borrower agricultural programme, data from the International Cotton Advisory Committee revealed that cotton production began to rise from the 44,000 metric tons within 2019/2020 to 90,000 tons in 2020/2021 and 93,000 tons in 2021/2022.

To drive the process, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had imposed FX restriction on importation of textile and textile materials into the country and in 2020, the apex bank said it invested over N120 billion across the cotton, textile and garment value chain and increased industry capacity of ginneries from an average of 19 per cent to 51 per cent. However, in 2022, Nigeria’s importation of textile and textile products rose by 100.3 per cent to N365.5 billion based on the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics. The country’s top partner countries for textiles and clothing imports within the period include: China, India, Kenya, Japan and Turkey.

There is no doubt that many countries and multinationals have since realised the potentials in the cotton/textile industry and have found their markets in Nigeria. Just last month, ARISE IIP, a leading developer of industrial parks in Africa, African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) and Rieter, the world’s leading supplier of systems for manufacturing yarn from staple fibres in spinning mills signed a framework agreement that will drive the Africa Textile Renaissance Plan. The aim is to establish 500,000 metric tons of cotton transformation capacity over the next three to five years with a funding commitment of $5 billion.

As much as we would want Nigeria to key into this laudable project, the partners have clearly stated that countries will be selected based on criteria such as power and gas availability, infrastructure readiness, and investment contributions.

This is a clear sign that Nigeria, with a struggling power sector that barely meets basic household and industry demands may not meet these criteria. The implication is that, when this initiative takes off, the companies will most likely look to Nigeria as a market, leveraging on our large and growing population as well as a penchant for foreign goods.

We are, however, delighted that the present administration earlier in August said it was collaborating with the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) to revamp the country’s moribund cotton industry with a target to create over 1.4 million jobs annually.

In a meeting with the delegation of the ICAC, Vice President Kashim Shettima had said in line with its industrialisation drive, the government will develop key components of the cotton value chain, made up of cotton farming, weaving, ginning and linking of cotton. He urged stakeholders to come up with a roadmap for the revitalisation of the cotton/textile sector, noting that, “it is time to work more and talk less”.

We, at Daily Trust, agree that more action rather than pronouncements is needed to revamp the cotton/textile industry. Government’s interventions must be continuous and consistent, its policy direction must be clear, it must be met with specific guidelines and timelines and it must be measurable and transparent.

Beyond these, challenges associated with poor cotton yield, which leads to high cost of production and makes Nigeria’s textile industry uncompetitive, must be addressed. This can be done through adoption of genetically modified cotton seeds to increase production output and withstand pest damage. Farmers should equally be empowered and their safety secured.

Similarly, the power sector’s inefficiency must be addressed for sustainability and textile companies should be supported with concessionary forex to import modern machines. The federal government must encourage companies exporting textile and clothing materials to set up factories in Nigeria to lessen our continued dependence on textile importations. Nigeria has the soil, manpower, resources and market for cotton/textile production; we must not allow ourselves to be used as the dumping ground for foreign countries.