Micheal Ola Adebayo, a director at Haffar Industrial Company Limited, has said that the federal government is beginning to show some commitment to reviving the troubled textile industry.
Adebayo, who is also the chairman of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) Gas Users Group, said government has come up with measures to reduce energy prices for major players in the industry in order to cut down their production costs.
The major challenge facing the textile industry is lack of competitiveness, caused by influx of cheap Asian products, high energy cost, and lack of high quality.
At a Made-in-Nigeria stakeholders’ meeting in Lagos attended by this writer last year, Grace Adereti, president of the Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association (NTMA), said: “What we need is the enabling environment. We cannot compete with the level of smuggling and counterfeiting going on now. We used to have about 127 textile firms in Nigeria but that has come down to two or three now.
“We had the revival loans but this didn’t work because our biggest problem has never been money,” Adereti said.
ODINAKA ANUDU
