OKOLIE: What Abia State Government Must Do To Uplift Aba

Victor Okoli is the Chairman/CEO of Silky Touch Emporium, a Nigeria fashion outfit that represents notable international fashion brands in the country. In this interview with CHUKS NWANNE, Okolie, who is versed in the business of fashion, gave insight into measures that must be put in place by the government to put Aba in the right perspective.

There’s this clamour for major investment in the Aba economy and it seems the present administration in Abia is looking towards that direction,
what’s your take on this?
WELL, I read something written in the papers by one of his (Gov. Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State) media aides and my question is, ‘if really they know it this much, why is he telling us?’ If they know that this is the problem, why can’t they just go ahead and solve it? In the write-up, he said, ‘Aba can do this, Aba can do that; that he saw tailors and their craftsmanship and their skills. That the governor wears what they made and the he’s planning to provide an enabling environment, train them…, some of these things will end up as political statements. You don’t even need to tell us; go ahead and do it. Really, you don’t need to publicise it and tell us that you want to go and make life better for Aba; that’s why you were elected in the first place, that’s your job.

Aba used to be the commercial hub of the Southeast, how viable is the economy today?
Aba was more like a springboard to a lot of Igbo people; it was so viable. They were into a lot of things ranging from trading and production; a lot of people started their lives in Aba. They are known for shoemaking, cloths and trading; I don’t know if it’s just their joy or it was planned, but they were so interested in those production areas.

What do you think is the way forward for Aba?
First of all, we have to identify what we actually want and how it is done; you cannot build something on nothing. Yes, production, but when we say production, what exactly do we want to produce? What are the necessary ingredients in that production line? When we say made in Nigeria, the issue now is, made in Nigeria what? If we talk of, for example leather products, are we talking about producing leather or producing finished leather products? Are we talking about finished products or the raw materials? If you say finished products, to me, it looks like ‘cut and join.’ What about the raw materials, are they available? We have to choose how to start. Do we start by producing the leather itself first and making sure we understand what leather textures are? What can we produce out of hyde? What can we produce out of leather? When it is too thick, it’s called hide, but when it is refined further, it comes to leather. Then when it comes to leather, there are different categories of leather. These segments of industries are huge on their own.

Assuming the government decides to invest in either raw materials or finished products, what are the options available?
If we don’t want to bother about finished products such as leather shoes, bags, belts and others, we can concentrate on producing and exporting leather; giving to other people to use as raw materials. It’s when we see that this is big enough, ideas will then start coming on what else we want to do with it. If we say, fine we don’t have means of getting leather – we don’t have cows, goats and others – that we want to concentrate on finished products, we can now ask government what they think about importation of leather? Can we have a rebirth? We then go round and know where we can get the cheapest leathers of good quality. We must ask ourselves, ‘do we really need to produce all these fashion items in real leather, is it necessary?

That brings us to cost implication?
Sure, we need to decide if we want to use uber leather, semi-leather or even outright synthetic that looks like leather, just like the Chinese do? These are issues that must be well understood so that we don’t go into it haphazardly. If you don’t prepare well and identify where your problems will come from and you just go in, there will be issues later. What if you can’t get enough leather here or that they are too expensive?

What if you hope on importation and government says they are banning importation of leather, what do you do?
The second aspect, which is to me most important, is that before you even start thinking of producing anything, you have to have the manpower; you need people that have the knowledge and know what to do. It’s like saying you want to build hospitals and courts, but you don’t have doctors and lawyers. People are shouting, ‘we don’t have good hospitals here, we don’t have good courts here,’ but hospital is not just the building or equipment; it’s about the professionals there.

Aba is an economy with different professionals and artisans operating there, how do you suggest the training should be done?
If we identify different professionals in all fields and give them the relevance they deserve, so that anybody that finds himself in any profession will feel dignified and respected, you won’t see everybody wanting to be a doctor or lawyer. We tend to give respect to some set of people in the society, thereby forgetting that every other area has its own respect with their own professionals. Government needs to go back and ask themselves this question, ‘where are our technical schools, what happened to GTC? Where are the polytechnics?’ Even the NCE awarding institutions are being upgraded to University of Education today, why? Is it the name that is important or what we get out of it? It can be university of education, but if it’s not solving the problem, it doesn’t make sense to me. So, to me, the most important thing is making sure we have enough qualified personnel to drive the economy; it’s the human being that will drive this economy, not money.

You are very conversant with the fashion industry in Italy, what’s obtainable there?
In Italy, when you go to their fashion industry, they introduce you to Professor this, Dr. that… meet this and that… If the knowledge is not there, they cannot move. If you go to Aba now and tell them that you are giving them an order from a small shop in Europe, that you want 20 containers of underwear; boxers and t-shirts. And you say, I want 10,000 white t-shirts in medium, 500,000 in large and 2000 in small and all that. Are you sure they will deliver those quantities with the exact measurement or are they just sewing to deliver because they’ve been given an order? Do they have the capacity to produce and package? Production is one thing, packaging is another; you talk about quality control, finishing and labeling. Again, you have to make sure that when you fix small on a shirt, it is actually small. When you fix M (medium), it’s actually M and not when you fix M, it turns out to be L (large). They need to pay attention to details.

How would you rate made in Aba products, because some people see them as inferior?
Well, I disagree that made in Aba is inferior. Generally, as of today, from my own investigation, they are not having problem of sales or marketing; nobody is rejecting their products. Maybe in the past Aba used to be regarded as inferior. From my investigation, their problem is the capacity to mass-produce, the capacity to control quality, the capacity to make a good marketing plan, the capacity to make good presentation and maintaining standards.

Are you saying their administrative aspect is poor?
The administrative aspect of the business is very bad and that’s where the knowledge that I’m talking about is very important. They need to document every production; they need to label it and give it a name or a number. So that, if I go to Aba and buy 10 shirts and I needed to reorder, I won’t have to go to Aba for supply. All I need to do is call or send them a mail and give them the article number. With the model and article number, they will know the fabric and style I want because they are labeled.

Could this be the reason they’ve not been able to successfully break into the mainstream of international fashion business?
They cannot sell internationally, because if you establish a business relationship with a shop abroad, they cannot be coming to Aba everyday to choose. They can come once in a while, but if they want to reorder, how do they communicate you if this administrative aspect is not straightened? All these things we are saying are very necessary, but the fundamental is source of raw materials. Have you asked them where they get their raw materials from and how thy get it? How difficult and how often do they get supply? These are issues that must be resolved before making any investment in the sector. So, to me, they should be talking about how it will be easier for them to produce, with electricity and trained personnel. No matter the machine and raw materials available, if somebody is not qualified to run the factory, you cannot produce.

Assuming the government succeeds in reviving the Aba economy, what impact would that make?
I can tell you, if they get it right… check all over the world, I have not seen any industry that is bigger than textile industry. Look at Indonesia, look at Sri Lanka… most of the trainers, t-shirts and jeans you wear now, they come from there. Because of cheap labour, people prefer to invest and produce there. We have to first of all get the personnel right and possibly export them. If we have the personnel ready, many of these international companies will even come and partner with us, but they want to see what they are coming to work with. In fashion industry, a lot of things are still done manually by human beings; that’s why the number of people that work in the textile and fashion industries is very huge.

Up till today, there’s no automated way to iron clothes; you have to do it manually of you want it well done. Sewing, hand must direct it. It’s easier to produce eyeglasses, it’s easier to produce a phone; it’s easier to produce any electronics than to produce fashion item. Why? In fashion, you need proper handling; human beings must be involved in almost every level. In other sectors, things can be programmed. So, fashion industry will do Aba and Nigeria as a whole, a huge success, but they have to start from the basis, except we want to just remain local producers.