Addressing members of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria at the state house on Monday, 18 December, 2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu promised to carefully review all the existing regulations negatively impacting local access to newsprint. This, he said, while promising that his administration would remain steadfast in “reinvigorating, retooling and re-engineering the Nigerian economy.”
Coincidentally, at about the time the President was restating that undertaking, Abiodun Oluwadare, a Professor of Pulp and Paper Science and Wood Quality, with minor interest in Climate Change Education at the University of Ibadan was, in his 112 – page Inaugural Lecture, not only laying out the historical antecedents of paper mills in Nigeria, thrashing out the problems bedevilling the industry, but was also vigorously pointing out ways to its belated resuscitation if Nigeria would ever take due advantage of her vast potentials in the sector.
I am yielding the column to Professor Oluwadare today to do what, at best, can only be a synopsis of his well-received Inaugural.
Happy reading.
The suitability of any raw material for paper-making requires the knowledge of its fibre composition in relation to the final product properties. Nigeria is blessed with diverse flora within its wide ecological zones. Trees, shrubs and other agricultural products are well distributed in Nigeria. Unfortunately, despite this abundance, Nigerian import bill on paper and paper products is more than N3Trillion per annum.
This is prodigal, to say the least, and absolutely uncalled for. Urgent attention is, therefore, needed to address the misnomer.
Research and development in sourcing for long fibre plants locally have led to the discovery of Sterculia setigera and Sterculia oblonga with fibre lengths higher than 2 mm. Besides these, Nigeria has several non-wood, and grasses raw materials which can serve as alternatives to the long fibres of softwood. These include cotton linters, kenaf, bamboo, miraculous berry, rice straws, bagasse, corn stalks and sorghum stalks which are already being used for paper making in some Asian countries, China inclusive.
Paper in general performs a variety of core functions in the modern world be it in educational, socio-economic, political even, cultural areas. The paper consumptive power of a nation, that is, per capita consumption, has been used as an index of her industrial growth and development. Nigeria has a rising population with a 3.2 per cent annual increase and is estimated to be about 400 million by 2050.
This will put Nigeria among the 10 most populous countries of the world. The current trend of pulp and paper consumption in Nigeria, as of 2020, has actually gone beyond these estimates; with a per capita consumption of 2.0 kg/year/person. Although our present net import of paper and paper products is over 380 million metric tonnes, Nigeria is still faced with a dire need of these products to meet the local paper requirements of the country’s increasing population.
After Nigeria’s independence in 1960, extensive examination of native species were carried out at the Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi, Lagos, but their non-suitability led to the introduction of an exotic specie – the Gmelina arborea.
This led to the initial plan to have five pulp and paper mills in the country, to be located in the following states: Anambra, Kwara, Akwa Ibom, Edo (then Bendel) and Ogun States. Of these five, however, only three were eventually established in Kwara (now Niger State), Akwa Ibom and Ogun State.
The first, the Nigerian Paper Mill, Jebba, was established in 1969 to produce Kraft paper. After some modifications to its installed capacity, it went up to 65,000 metric tonnes but initial annual production, from imported pulp materials, was only 12,000 metric tonness per annum. By 1985 the production level was increased to 65,000 metric tonnes to utilise the mixed hardwood species (14) which was to be blended with imported long fibres, intended to reduce reliance on imported pulp.
As mentioned earlier, the Jebba Paper Mill was to produce Kraft pulp liner boards. In 1986 another integrated pulp and paper mill was commissioned in Akwa Ibom to produce the much-needed newsprint with a production capacity of 100,000 metric tonnes per annum. The third mill was to produce bond papers with a capacity of 100,000 metric tonnes per annum.
It is worth mentioning that Nigeria was to be the sole producer of pulp and paper in West Africa, and was to produce about 6% of the sub-region’s total paper requirement. Nigeria thus had the comparative advantage of being a net exporter of pulp and paper in the entire region, even beyond.
Current Situation in The Pulp and Paper Mills in Nigeria:
The planned levels of production at the functional pulp and paper mills could not be achieved as a result of inadequate supply of local raw materials, most crucial of which was the long fibre pulp which plays a critical role in the strength properties of paper.
This shortfall led to the gradual decline in the production levels and the eventual collapse of the paper mills. Although a new one is coming on board but its output cannot meet the required need of end users in the country. Thus Nigeria, with a growing, and viable newspaper industry, a thriving book printing and publishing industry, complete with a litany of allied paper products segment, rather than source its requirements locally, now wholly depends on imports, deploying huge foreign exchange in the process.
Nigeria presently imports corrugated paper, newsprint, bond paper, cartons, Kraft paper, sack paper, liner board and chipboard, among others. These are all items which we should, effortlessly, be producing locally.
This is a national travail. But where do we go from here?
There has been far too many reports on the subject, examples being the following:
Why government must revisit pulp and paper mills sale’- The Nation 09/10/2015;
Nigeria Loses N180bn Due To The Collapse of 3 Paper Mills by Nairametrics 21/09/2015; Nigeria’s comatose mills – Business Day; Stakeholders lament comatose state of paper mills – The Vanguard 27/09/2015;
Nigeria’s dying paper mills gasp for oxygen by The Guardian 09/08/2020;
Paper Industry: A Sector in Death Throes – ThisDay 04/02/2022; and,
Action needed to save paper industry from collapse – The Punch 04/06/2022.
Concerning this lurid situation, President Bola Tinubu recently asked:“Where are the paper industries?”,
in response to the address by members of the Newspaper Proprietors’Assocoation of Nigeria when they visited him. Happily, he promised to review all the policies negatively affecting the newspaper industry in the country.
Below, I enumerate some of the problems confronting the industty:
(i)Inadequate raw materials and the unpreparedness of the companies in the sector to make use of locally produced materials;
(ii)Absence of facilities and equipment for paper testing, even in institutions of higher learning.
(iii)Unhelpful government policies and a lack of interest in revitalising the paper mills.
(iv)Lack of support from the sector for research in pulp and paper.
(v)Low capacity building in terms of curriculum development.
The paper industry holds much promise for job creation, throughout the value chain. It can contribute millions of jobs, and thus ameliorate the appalling youth employment in the country.
Profitability of investment in the pulp and paper industry in Nigeria is guaranteed with global prices of various pulp types being even higher than crude oil. For instance, a barrel of crude is equivalent to 139 kg in weight while a metric tonne of paper is 1000 kg. Thus, on the average, the price of crude oil from 2007 to 2020 was $79.24 while that of pulp was $836.71.
By simple calculation, 1 kg of crude oil is $0.53 while 1 kg of paper is $0.85
Given a combined Rated Mill Capacity of 265,000Mt (which is grossly below the required need of the nation), Nigeria would, cumulatively, have made $221,728,150 and over $5,543,203,750 in the last years before the mills were closed down or became ineffective.
It can be deduced from these facts that if investors are given required enabling environment, the pulp and paper mills in Nigeria can effectively come back to life again and substantially contribute to the country’s economic growth by facilitating job creation as well as greening initiatives, through the establishment of massive pulpwood plantations. Several raw materials available in Nigeria, among them, kenaf, sterculia, pine, sisal, ficus, miraculous berry and bamboo, among others, have been identified as suitable for paper making.
In order to achieve a quick recovery in the sector, therefore, it is important to bear the following in mind:
At the national level, there is the need to establish a paper commission to address the present situation in the entire sector and, in particular, provide the industry with a national road map.
No country can develop without research and development. It is, therefore, long overdue for Nigeria to have a pulp and paper research institute.
That is the answer to the President’s question about the whereabouts of both newsprint and the paper industry as this is what is done in countries which are serious about development. Indeed, the sheer paucity of foreign exchange in Nigeria should tell government that this is not one area it should needlessly be throwing it’s scarce foreign exchange.
Government should similarly provide an enabling environment to serious investors who are willing to put their hard – earned money in the sector.
This could be through tax holidays, rebates on land acquisitions, zero duty on imported machines and equipment, and chemicals used in producing paper and related items – though duty waivers should now only sparingly be granted given the abuse to which they have been prone.
It is also high time that investors in the sector begin to show interest in funding Research and Development by committing substantial funds to same.
Finally, the Federal government should find a lasting solution to the importation of books and paper products, as well as put an end to the printing of books and related materials from abroad.
