Intervention fund program to revive the Nigerian textile industry fails

The Federal Ministry of Industry to address the challenges faced by the Nigerian textile sector and to reposition it as the major driver of job creation and generation revenue for the country. The Federal Government through Cotton Textile Garment Intervention Fund invested N100 billion to revive the Nigerian textile industry which has ended into a failure.

The Cotton Textile and Garment Fund, which the Bank of Industry manages at a very low interest rate was tasked with the job of reversing the progressive industry collapse and ensuring a rapid revitalization and upgrading the entire Cotton Textile Garment (CTG) value-chain. As the textile industry was one of those areas government was looking at and want to remove the barriers to increase productivity in this important and strategic sector.

NACCIMA and the Federal Ministry of Industry are looking at the reasons, the intervention failed to work, in order to avert future occurrence. The National President, Mr. Mohammed Abubakar, Nigerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA), said that the intervention failed because the issues on raw materials and machineries was not considered before putting up the programme.

To ensure the revival of the textile sector, a number of issues should have been put in place, such as ensuring the machineries are producing effectively and efficiently to world standards and are able to make the companies compete constructively.

The raw material, cotton, secondly machineries and thirdly training the people to work competitively is extremely important of textile sector to be competitive.

According to the National President of NACCIMA these are issues on the textile industry. When the research is completed, they start first with the agricultural development of long fibre cotton and if it is being produced and developed competitively, then only it is possible to get investors, possibly in amalgamation with other existing investor to go mega with bigger industries that will give that competitive edge. To compete with China, they need to have a scheme similar to that of cement and that is what the government is doing now.