By Franklin Alli

BULK importation of papers by Indian businesses is undermining Paper Mills in Nigeria, says Chartered Institute of Professional Printers of Nigeria (CIPPON).

“The Indians are the ones doing the bulk of importation of paper into the country. They felt if they should allow paper mills here to grow, their businesses will not thrive.” said Alhaji Muhammed Wahab Lawal, CIPPON President.

In an interview with Vanguard, Lawal lamented the moribund state of paper mills in the country. “All the pulps that Murtala Muhammed planted from the Expressway down to Iwopin and the water sides have all gone.  If you go there, you can’t see any tree standing; now we are depending on Indian papers, South African papers.

He stressed that CIPPON has been urging the federal government to revive the moribund paper mills because of their enormous advantages to the economy. “It is not too late for the government to breathe life into the moribund paper mills; government can do this by fashioning out policy that would create the enabling environment for the mills to grow.”

Commenting on local printers that goes to  South Africa and Dubai to print jobs and bring them back, he said: “Even if printing will be taken outside this country, let it be an established printing press here, but if there is a job we cannot complete here, we can take it to South Africa .

If the job is printed offshore, whatever you get as profit can be used to buy machine that can print it locally because you won’t like to be going outside to be printing all the time.  “That is why we are urging government to do physical visitation of our facilities.

He commended the decision of the CBN to print security documents locally and assured that local printers have the capacity to print security documents. He said, “ Recently, the CBN Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido, said they will not print security document outside this country as from June; we pray he shouldn’t extend the date., and he has mentioned the security printers he’s going to use in Nigeria.”

“We have all it takes to print security document here.   That is why we are calling on government, let’s go round and have physical inspection of printing equipment we have in the country.  We want them to know what we have.  Look at the machine that Academy Press bought recently; Union Bank Plc financed all the machinery. Local printers can compete favourably with counterparts in the world. We have the input and machinery.”