Saidu Adhama, founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Adhama Textile and Garment Industry Limited in Kano, speaks on how the textile industry can be revived by protecting local manufacturers from their foreign counterparts. He believes a lifeline is not what the industry needs to recover from recession. ADEKUNLE YUSUF met him in Kano
What is the state of the textile industry?
There is a big vacuum but the government has been doing been its best to address the issue to the best of my understanding. But there is still a lot to be done. It is a collapsed sector. Cotton is a job creator and an empowerment commodity. Starting from its planting to the time you take your cloth to your washman, it is a source of livelihood. By the time you make cotton one of the major commodities that government should have strategic policy on, then you certainly have no reason to have any poor individual in this country; everybody will live within the acceptable level of livelihood because everybody will be busy doing something. For instance, one basic need of humanity, that 90 per cent of humanity needs which is essential to dressing is pant. Going by our population in this country, which is 150 million, from a day old to the adult, given the poverty level of Nigerians, give each Nigerian 3 pieces of pant per annum, that will mean 150 million by 3 pieces. That is 450million pieces of pant. And if a baby is born today after 90 days, that baby will outgrow those three pieces of pants used at birth, but we still say let the baby use it for 1 year. And today no industry in Nigeria has and is using the capacity to produce 150 million pants per annum today.
What has been done to address the challenges?
We had a retreat in Abuja with the Minister of Trade and Investment and I asked him the question that which factory is producing 1 million pieces of pants for Nigerians today. The answer was negative and the market for 450 million pieces of pants for Nigerians, not even counting our neighbouring countries is there. But, who owns those markets? The Asians and the Middle East because Nigerians prefer that these items are brought from Dubai, India, Singapore and China.
What is your take on the World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement?
How can someone who cannot vote and be voted for according to our constitution just appear one day and takeover our market, all in the name of open market? Why not apply the same principle of open market to our electoral system? It is only in Nigeria that people vote and lose the control of their markets all in the name of World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement. What has been the benefit of the agreement since we signed the WTO? It has always been disadvantages. It is time we checked how far we have come and what are the benefits to the economy. The government is investing money and I am one of the beneficiaries of the revival fund of Bank of Industry. I bought all the machines in my industry; yet I can’t employ people. I have the capacity to employ 1200 Nigerians but now I am able to employ only 24. I am also faced with the challenge of training people because we have lost all our skilled workers.
But, at the end of the day, someone is being allowed to bring in what 1200 people can produce and take to the market through Niger or Lagos or Chad. And there is every day importation of finished goods. A few weeks back, the Chinese traders had a meeting with our government and our representative in the sector and they said they have made a turnover on finished goods to the tune of $4 billion in Kano in just six months. That was during the offseason when there was no Christmas, Sallah or any period of celebration and this market is meant for the Nigerian textile industry, tailor, and farmers. So, the government is not even benefiting. So, if the Chinese can make $4 billion offseason, what will happen during the on-season when we have celebration? And he went unchallenged.
Which means that we have the market?
The market is there; it is just the protection of manufacturers that is missing because they believe that WTO and deregulation have been put in place. We are yet to know which one is superior: Is it the WTO, deregulation policy, liberalisation policy or the constitution? To the best of my knowledge, the WTO agreement says any signatory has the right to protect its home-based industry and Nigeria is a signatory. There are some countries you will visit that they will tell you that that business is strictly for that country and should not be imported. But it is not like that in Nigeria. We are the ones who voted in all these politicians, yet because of this WTO, they are voting us out of business.
We heard that with the textile intervention fund, there is a new lease of f life for the textile industry. Are there grey areas?
At the initial stage, we told government that it has to be a complete circle and there should be no vacuum in the revival effort. If you want to revive a patient, you have to give him full dosage of treatment. But, the gap we have now is the market. We are now at a stage of production, we have modernised. Those of us who have accessed the textile revival fund, if we produce now, there is no market for us. I produce T-shirts here and the production cost for my T-shirt is N230. The retail sale of it in the Chinese and Indian market is N130 to N150 in Kano market, far lower than the production cost here in Kano using my own generator, water, paying the workers and training the workers. I need profit to pay my wages and repay my loans, but the retail sales of the same quality or even less is N120 and the highest quality is sold for N180. How can I compete? The government has to stop the smuggling and the dumping of foreign materials.
What is the interest rate on the intervention fund?
It is lesser than 10 per cent for between 6 to 8 years. And that is small because for a reviving sector, it is meant to be about 12 years considering the challenges we are facing. For one and a half years, I could not open the factory because of the violence. If you check around, you will find out that most textile factories have closed down in northern states. In the past, they used to employ people per shift, and they have 24 hours, but it is now completely closed, though BoI is trying to revive them after about ten years of collapse.
The Indians and the Chinese are even bringing in caps; they don’t want our tailors to work. Even the singlet that most people wear is not made here; they are imported, even though we have the machines that can be used to produce them. I have 35 years of experience in the business. If you give me money to buy machines and raw materials and you don’t give me an equal opportunity in the market, then where is the help? If we Nigerians say we should not be in isolation, I once made a suggestion during a retreat to help revive the textile industry, which the then Vice-President Atiku Abubakar attended. I suggested that maybe we should also allow Nigerian customs and army to compete with the Chinese, Indian or British or American customs and soldiers. I don’t think that will be fair of us. There was a big silence; the Vice President just shook his head. Then, why is our government and legislators opening we in the private sector to undue competition? We cannot compete with the manufacturers in India, China, Europe because we don’t have the infrastructure on the ground.
