From Collins Olayinka, Abuja

The Federal Government has said it will collaborate with the Bank of Industry (BoI) and other stakeholders in the garment sector to reverse about $4 billion that Nigerians spend on imported clothing yearly.
  
The Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Industry, John Enoh, who stated this, added that apart from the BoI, the government would also work with critical financial institutions to facilitate access to finance and machinery for garment and textile businesses.
  
The minister stressed that the Federal Government was committed to not only reviving the comatose textile industry but also promoting other made-in-Nigeria goods.
  
While the minister acknowledged the challenges posed by infrastructural and financial gaps, he hinted that the recently launched Industrial Revolution Work Group, tasked with exploring case-by-case interventions for reviving dormant industries, would be crucial in addressing identified obstacles.
  
He said: “We must ask ourselves: do we prioritise cotton, textile or garments? The reality is that garments stimulate the entire chain. Countries like Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Kenya started by importing textiles, but built strong garment export markets that later justified investment in spinning, weaving and cotton farming.”
  
Navdeep Sodhi of the Afroconsulting Trade and Services Limited argued that the textiles and clothing industry was the cornerstone of development in most developing countries and had a significant socio-economic impact.
  
He added that, globally, more than 100 million people were directly employed in the industry and millions indirectly in the value chain. He disclosed that with the textile market worth about seven billion dollars, Nigeria was the leading market in the ECOWAS sub-region.
  
However, he lamented that more than 90 per cent of the market was served by cheap imports, which enter the country through grey channels.
 “This not only deprives the country of massive revenue but also hundreds and thousands of decent jobs and value addition to local raw materials. There is an urgent need to reverse this trend,” he stated.
  
The stakeholders speaking on the theme, “Co-Creating Solutions to Grow CTG Industry in Nigeria”, with the core objective of finalising a roadmap for the industry’s revival, decried inconsistency of policies that led to the pitiable state of the textile and the garment sector.
  
In her remarks, the President of the Garment and Accessories Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Adenike Ogunlesi, decried the huge amount Nigerians were spending on imported clothing material.
  
Ogunlesi, who noted that all previous efforts to revive the textile industry had failed to achieve desired goals, maintained that the troubled sector seems to have defied solutions.
  
To spur the sector back to life, stakeholders urged Nigeria to toe the line of its neighbours that have given concessional power to operators as an incentive.