Kaduna residents optimistic, cautious over FG’s moves to revive dead textile industry

By Ibrahim Hassan-Wuyo

Kaduna was for decades, the heartbeat of 

Nigeria’s textile industry. It was a thriving concern metropolis powered by concern machines, bustling factories, and a workforce that erstwhile stood successful the tens of thousands.

The city’s Kakuri area, successful particular, was a vibrant concern hub wherever workers ran shifts, operated circular the clock, and the textiles, according to analysts, were among the state’s biggest employers aft government.

Sadly, the communicative has taken a atrocious crook successful caller years. The once-flourishing textile factories were grounded by bid of challenges, ranging from the dumping of substandard overseas products, particularly from China, to mediocre powerfulness supply, anemic argumentation enforcement, and rising accumulation costs. The effect was wide unemployment, deepening poverty, and a surge successful transgression arsenic thousands of skilled and unskilled workers were near stranded with nary alternatives.

When 1 visits the concern areas, the show of abandoned mill buildings present overrun by weeds, rodents, and successful immoderate cases utilized arsenic transgression hideouts, became symbolic of a fallen elephantine successful Nigeria’s concern history.

However, anticipation appears to beryllium connected the skyline erstwhile again, arsenic hardly a week aft the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator George Akume, assured stakeholders successful Kaduna that President Bola Tinubu’s medication is committed to reviving dormant industries crossed the North, a Federal Government delegation led by the Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, Senator John Owan Enoh, commenced an inspection circuit of cardinal textile facilities successful the state.

The circuit is portion of Agenda 7 nether the President’s 8-point economical agenda, which emphasises concern revitalisation, occupation creation, and inclusive growth.

During his visit, Senator Enoh toured the facilities of United Nigeria Textiles Limited, UNTL, and Chellco Industries, 2 iconic names successful Kaduna’s textile history. He stressed that the revival of UNTL is captious to restoring capitalist assurance and jump-starting a broader concern translation successful the country.

The symbolic value of this determination wasn’t mislaid connected stakeholders. Speaking during the minister’s visit, His Royal Highness, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Emir of Kano and Chairman of UNTL, lamented the 2022 shutdown of the mill owed to economical headwinds, contempt its bequest of employing implicit 10,000 radical astatine its peak.

Sanusi warned that without urgent authorities intervention, the factory’s illness could go permanent. He highlighted persistent challenges facing the textile industry: inconsistent energy supply, unchecked smuggling of textiles, anemic enforcement of intelligence spot rights, and deficiency of organization enactment for sourcing section materials, particularly for subject and paramilitary uniforms.

At the UNTL, the Minister emphasized that textiles revival would reconstruct investors’ assurance successful Nigeria’s textile practice and catalyse broader concern growth.

The curate assured stakeholders of the Federal Government’s unwavering support, noting that these efforts are portion of a broader strategy—Agenda 7 of President Tinubu’s 8-Point Agenda—which prioritizes occupation creation, inclusive economical growth, and sustainable concern development.

Enoh explained that the ministry had convened stakeholders’ engagements to place and resoluteness bottlenecks, beforehand public-private partnerships, enactment with improvement partners, fortify argumentation frameworks, and enactment section manufacturing with a absorption connected improving export competitiveness.

At Chellco Industries, helium praised the resilience of the textile company, commending the absorption for keeping the mill moving since 1980 nether trying economical conditions, arsenic it continues to supply jobs for implicit 290 workers.

A Kaduna resident, Samuel Yusuf, invited the development, saying the determination gives them anticipation for occupation instauration and economical revival.

He recalled erstwhile the textile manufacture was the city’s lifeline. He however, urged authorities to lucifer words with factual actions to guarantee that the factories get backmost to beingness and statesman to supply jobs for the teeming unemployed connected the streets.

Another Kaduna resident, Elder Oibe Sunday, described the caller effort by authorities to revive the manufacture arsenic a measurement successful the close directi...