Textile Import Bill Climbs N100billion Yearly

Nigeria’s spend on imported clothing materials has hit over N100 billion annually, Secretary General, National Union of Textile Garment Workers of Nigeria, NUTGTWN, Issa Aremu has revealed.

Aremu, who spoke in Abuja during a Reachout Nigeria Public Lecture with the theme: “Leadership: A collective Responsibility” organized by Christ Embassy Abuja, Aremu said Nigeria’s textile industry used to be the third largest in Africa before it abandoned.

According to him,  textile industry must be fully developed and repositioned to create job opportunities for unemployed Nigerians.

Calling on government to resuscitate the industry as a means of getting the country out of its present economic challenges, Aremu said: “The real security we need is economy security, jobs should be created and the key for sustainable jobs is industrialization.”

“We have to diversify the economy, bring back labour intensive industry like textile which has enough labour ,capacity and the key to it is that there must be uninterrupted power supply and we must patronize made in Nigeria products. Once industries are back, Nigeria is not just an investment destination, it is a job destination.

“This country spends about 100 billion naira annually on clothing materials but they are all imported. You can imagine if we could make half of these locally.

He added that, curbing textile importation will not only nip in the bud the draining of foreign exchange, it will also create jobs for the teeming mass of people, which is another way out of the current recession.