HomeBusiness Textile companies close shop as inferior imported materials flood market
Textile companies close shop as inferior imported materials flood market
Written by Princewill Ekwujuru
Monday, 17 November 2008
As more textile companies closed shop and the government apparently lost on how to revive the dying sector, smugglers are busy having fun as reports have shown that the Nigerian market is being flooded with finished textile products imported from Asia.
Textile industry
Worrisome as it may be the fact remains that the imported products are of the most inferior qualities. Rather than blame the perpetrators of the act, Secretary General, National Union of Textile, Garments and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria (NUTGWN), Isa Aremu, said it is an attestation to the fact that governance has collapsed in Nigeria.
Aremu who spoke in Lagos says, “Some of the Asians who are accused of being behind smuggling of textile products into the country were employers of labour in the past. We must look at the reason why they now find importation more appealing.
The smugglers have disregarded government orders banning importation of finished textile products by sneaking them through the borders to Nigeria.
On the role of the Nigerian Customs services and what this portend for the Nigerian economy, Aremu said, “The Customs are helpless. Everybody is a losers. The country has drifted to a country where no income is generated from textile products because they are smuggled in. The government is simply not working.”
Reports have said that some of the people behind the smuggling of textile products into the country were employees and operators of some of the textile firms that have closed shops in Nigeria. Some of them, according to industry sources, have found a habitable abode for the trade in the North, using Kaduna and Kano as abode.
“The government that was on duty providing power and other infrastructure in the past has simply collapsed, that has caused producers of textiles to become importers,” Aremu said.
But industry players believe this will mean the final burial for a sector that is almost dead. Recent information reveals that no fewer than five textile companies in Lagos State have stopped production in the last five months. One of such, Bhajaraj (with an estimated staff strength of over 1,000), closed operations in July, paying off its staff. Four others have folded up operations in the last two months.
The four firms that have join the long list of moribund textile manufacturing firms in Nigeria are Four Spinners located in Ikorodu area, ITI factories in Isolo and Ikorodu and Reliance Textiles. The five companies were all based in Lagos and employed about 9,000 people.
The sad news, however, is that some of the textile firms that are closing shops in Nigeria are shifting operations to neighbouring West African countries. Some of the countries that are benefiting from the fall of Nigeria’s textile industry are Sierra Leone, Ghana, Guinea and others.
In a related development, the much-sought relief for Nigeria’s ailing textiles industry might still be a bridge too far as more textile manufacturing firms operating in the country are closing shops.
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