The Creative Director of C. N. Daniels Couture also known as Jacket King, Nnamdi Daniels, has called for policies that would develop the fashion industry in the country.
He said this while speaking with reporters at the 10th anniversary of the fashion outfit in Abuja at the weekend to express appreciation to all who have been part of the journey so far
The entrepreneur, who said they create clothes for beauty and for glory, noted that some government policies stifle the growth of the industry.
He urged steady engagement between the policy makers to create a pathway for prosperity through boosting the industry.
Among such policies, he said was the ban of foreign fabrics into the country.
He said the industry if properly harnessed has the potential to shore up the economic fortunes of the country and improve its foreign exchange.
On their impact so far, he said they had disrupted the fashion industry in the country.
“There has been a major disruption in the fashion industry. Before now, fashion in Nigeria was for the really, really uneducated. But there’s been a major push from people now, even undergraduates trying to become fashion designers at the moment. And our brands are way, way out there. We have, like personally, we have a branch in the UK, Uganda, Kampala.
“So Nigerian fashion has really grown and the world has accepted it. People are now getting used to our style and our ability to create contemporary wares.
“When we looked at it, we realized that tailors, most of the tailors we have in Nigeria actually not exactly based in the urban cities. So what we’ve done is ensure that with our project go to the suburban especially places like Ilorin where people learn fashion from the young age. So what we’ve done is we take them, we bring them to the city teach
them how to work with us and before long these guys are so good and they start helping their families too and become breadwinners.”
He said currently they have done over 70 people from Ilorin so far in the last four years.
“It’s a project we started four years ago and we still have more. At the moment we have some people we trained who are from Ilorin too, who are right now in Kampala. That’s where they’re working from,” he said.
He said there were big plans to expand the brand apart from helping the community giving back.
Daniel said they were ensuring that they have more people who are training and putting back and that they are taken off the streets.
“What we’re trying to do is also generate FX for the country with our international brands and international offices.
‘We have so many challenges. One of them is government policies. We have so many policies that don’t favour fashion designers, especially the ban on fabric. It makes it difficult for us to access a textile because we don’t have any good textile here in Nigeria.
“And then power is an issue. There’s no steady power in any part of the country. So that’s a major issue. We also have the issue of access to funding because a lot of people are coming into the industry and they need funds, but there’s no access to funding.
“So for my industry, for example, I know clearly that it is difficult for young entrepreneurs to get access to machines and a whole lot of things. So if the people in the industry, especially policy makers, involve some of us or even do like a town hall meeting to get our opinions or suggestions on how this work better because this is a pool.
“You can’t blame them for the policies they make really because they are bureaucrats, they are just civil servants who’s going through their work but they’ve never been in the field to understand what it is to be in the field. So when you bring people in the field it helps you to cut across all corners when you’re making decisions. You hear from us and we tell you this is actually what will help our industry and this is how we can grow this industry.
“There should be like a conversation not just an event. There should be a conversation where we are able to say okay this would help, this would help, this you should throw away, it won’t help,” he said.
He said they ensure inclusivity. “Here we don’t discriminate. If you have the skill or you have a need to understand what we do, we are sure that we help you in any way we can so we are not discriminatory at all,” he said.
On what the government should to do, he said, “I’ll tell them to stop giving out money stop giving out that money in the name of poor people. Give it to people who actually employ people. Not to people you can’t give money and say you’re giving to poor people for crying out loud making people poorer by doing that.
“But when you give it to an entrepreneur who knows what he’s doing and give him mandates, okay I’m giving you a hundred million with a charge that in next 10 years I need you to have created a hundred more of you.
“Not just in our industry, entrepreneurs across board, micro and small and medium scale economies are the ones running the economy in every country. But when you neglect them, what you’re doing is you’re creating poverty because there’s just so much we can’t do,” he said.