National policy needed for Nigerian textile tradition —Stakeholders

The Nigeria textile industry was given a lift recently with the launch of ‘Wear Nigeria’, a campaign aimed at promoting the country’s textile tradition through a deliberate national policy and focused intervention that would outlive different governments.  
  

“We went to our British Council, our 47 disciplines in the arts were identified, out of the 47, they picked only three: movie, music and fashion. Interestingly, fashion overtook those other two. Deeper in the context of what they did with fashion was based on what they saw on the runway.

“So, now where are the local textiles that boosted our GDP? We could see the potential at the time due to the leadership but now where are we? People still want Nigerian textiles but they can’t get them because our producers are out of the market.”

“Now people are importing the Chinese made Adire. So when you see those shiny adire, they are from China, even a lot of people wore the China adire to Ojude Oba. However, the only way to counter all these is through practical programmes such as this ‘Wear Nigeria’. We still have great industries such as Nike Art Gallery where over three thousand women have been trained to produce our fabrics.”