Urges competitiveness reforms over import restrictions

Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE), Dr Muda Yusuf, has expressed strong reservations about the Senate’s resolution calling for a ban on textile fabric imports.

It warned that the step would unlikely achieve its intended objectives and could instead, have significant adverse consequences for the economy.

Speaking via a policy brief made available to The Guardian, he said that while the objective of reviving Nigeria’s textile industry was legitimate and commendable, an outright import prohibition was unlikely to achieve that objective.

Rather than revitalising the textile industry, he said, the proposed ban could impose substantial collateral costs on downstream industries, disrupt critical supply chains and jeopardise millions of jobs and livelihoods.

The proposal, he said, reflected a narrow view of the textile industry’s challenges and overlooked the extensive linkages within Nigeria’s textile, garment, fashion, furniture and creative economy value chains.

Noting that Nigeria’s fashion, garment-making and tailoring industry is substantially larger than the textile manufacturing segment and valued at about N10 trillion, the industry, he said, would provide livelihoods for an estimated 10 million Nigerians and was one of the country’s most vibrant creative economy sectors.

He added that restricting imports would disrupt production, increase costs, reduce consumer choice and threaten thousands of micro, small and medium enterprises engaged in fashion, tailoring and garment manufacturing.

According to him, the garment industry also generates substantial domestic value addition through design, tailoring, branding, embroidery, merchandising and retailing. In many cases, the local value added exceeds the value of the textile inputs. Public policy, he noted, should protect this broader value chain.

He disclosed that the decline of Nigeria’s textile industry was primarily the consequence of longstanding structural constraints rather than import competition; including high energy costs, expensive credit, poor infrastructure, logistics bottlenecks, obsolete technology, smuggling, weak access to long-term finance and policy inconsistency.

He urged the government to prioritise locally produced textiles and garments for uniforms for the military, paramilitary agencies, schools and other public institutions; channel part of textile-related import tax revenues into a dedicated fund providing single-digit financing for technology upgrading and industry modernisation.