|
PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA
Reviving the Textile Industry and Other Matters Arising
Penultimate Saturday, April 26, the Arewa Media Forum, a Kaduna based all-comers’ organization of media buffs interested in the country’s media order, organized a seminar on reviving the comatose textile industry at the Trade Fair Complex, Kaduna. The industry used to rank second, some even say above, government as the biggest employer of labour in the organized sector of the economy. All that has since become history.
The seminar was apparently ill timed given the absence of many of the big men we – I happen to be the Forum’s chairman - had invited, some of who had accepted to come. Ahmadu Bello University, in nearby Zaria, was convocating on the same day and in the not-too-far-away Kano, former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida’s first son, Mohammed, was wedding, not to mention the launching of a biography of his well respected late father, Alhaji Ahmadu, by former Inspector General of Police, Alhaji Ibrahim Commassie, at Arewa House, Kaduna.
Consequently neither the Special Guest of Honour and the principal financier of the seminar, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, Executive Governor of Kano State, home to the third largest textile industry outside Lagos and Kaduna, or the Chief Host, Arc. Namadi Sambo, Executive Governor of Kaduna, or even the Chairman of the occasion, Alhaji Ismaila Isa, himself a captain of the textile industry and Chairman of the construction giant, Bulet Nigeria Ltd, as well as a friend and confidant of General Babangida, could make it to the seminar.
Their absence was such a great pity because their knowledge and presence would, more likely than not, have enriched the seminar.
The employers were well represented by Alhaji Bashir Borodo, Chairman of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Alhaji Saidu Adhama, Executive Chairman of Adhama Textile and Garment Industry Ltd, Kano, and Senator Walid Jibrin, a general manager at the United Nigeria Textiles Ltd, Kaduna, the biggest textile conglomerate in Nigeria. On labour’s side we had the “Comrade Governor,” Adams Oshiomhole, the Secretary General of the Nigerian Labour Congress, Comrade Abdulwahab Umar, and the Secretary-General of the Textile Workers’ Union, Comrade Issa Aremu.
Senator Jibrin and Alhaji Saidu delivered written papers while Borodo spoke off the cuff, as did all three comrades. All six were agreed on one thing, namely that the greatest threat to the country’s textile industry has been cheap and inferior quality Chinese imports. They also seem agreed on oil as the principal cause of the neglect of agriculture as the source of cotton for the industry. In particular Aremu said Nigeria should be lamenting 50 years of the neglect of agriculture instead of celebrating 50 years of oil. Where they differed was about how to tackle the threat from the Chinese.
Comrade Oshiomhole, I think, best captured the nature of the threat when he described Nigeria as a “smugglers haven”. He simply couldn’t understand why Nigeria would, he said, make the fight against hard drugs like cocaine such a priority while at the same time it turns a blind eye to textile smuggling which poses a much more serious threat to the country’s economic and social security than drugs, bad as it may be.
For Oshiomhole, the explanation of what he described as the paradox of a high demand for textiles and the decline of the industry lies in its high cost structure brought about largely by the decay in our infrastructure, particularly the energy and transport infrastructure. Unless these are addressed, he said, any attempt to revive the industry would be a waste of time.
Space does not allow me to give even a summary of the papers presented, but it is important, perhaps, even imperative, to highlight Alhaji Saidu Adhama’s insight into Oshimole’s paradox of high demand and a comatose industry. Let us, Alhaji Saidu said, assume that an average Nigerian can afford three clothes a year each measuring 10 meters. With a population of 150 million, he said, we are looking at a demand of about 4½ billion meters a year. Producing full blast, the country’s entire textile industry can produce only 1.5 billion meters, according to Senator Jibrin.
Alhaji Bashir Borodo questioned Adhama’s assumption on the grounds that most Nigerians are too poor to afford even one piece of cloth. I am, however, inclined to agree with Adhama because what we are talking about here are averages and Adhama’s three pieces per each Nigerian is reasonable considering the huge gap in wealth distribution in Nigeria whereby the rich can afford wardrobes running into hundreds of thousands of meters.
For me, the most profound remarks made at the seminar were, however, not by the main speakers. They were the remarks made from the audience by Dr. Haruna Yerima, a former member of the House of Representatives and a casualty of his principled stand against President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Third Term agenda. Oil, he said, is God’s gift. As such it is wrong to see it as a curse. Rather we should blame ourselves and our leaders for what we have done or not done with our oil wealth.
Not done with us over our penchant to blame the stars for our problems, Yerima added the haymaker about our tendency towards talking too much and doing too little.
Surveying recent events, one couldn’t agree more with the former federal legislator. Just look around you. Former Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Muhammadu Uwais, has been chairing a committee to reform our electoral law. Then just the other day Senate President, Brigadier-General David Mark, announced that the Senate is about to start a review of our Constitution.
Then again last Saturday, the new Spectator newspaper published an interview with the elderly Chief Anthony Enahoro -- the celebrated mover of the motion for Nigeria’s independence -- in which he climbs back on his hobbyhorse about the need for Nigerians to convene a sovereign national conference to decide how to dissolve the country! “Many Nigerians,” says the chief, “feel they don’t want to be in Nigeria… so why impose on them?”
I honestly don’t know where the elderly chief got his Nigerians from who don’t want to live in Nigeria anymore. I do not also know how big their size is. I do, however, know that the majority of ordinary Nigerians continue to live, trade, work, play and otherwise mix with other ordinary Nigerians of different tribes, regions and religious in spite of the manipulations of their differences by their leaders to keep them constantly at daggers drawn.
As the late radical historian, Dr. Bala Usman, used to say, Nigeria’s problem essentially is a vertical one between the Nigerian masses and their elite and not a horizontal one between tribes, religions and regions.
As if all this cacophony from our leaders is not confusing enough, Mr. Philip Umeadi, Jnr, speaking for the so-called Independent National Electoral Commission, announces that Sokoto State governor, Alhaji Aliyu Wamakko and his deputy, Barrister Mukhtar Shagari, whose elections last April were nullified by the Court of Appeal because it said they were not properly nominated by the Peoples Democratic Party, are eligible to contest in the re-run now scheduled for May 24. This, in spite of the fact that the same court had ruled that only lawfully nominated candidates can contest in re-runs.
No less shocking, the enfant terrible of Obasanjo’s regime, former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Malam Nasir el-Rufai, looks the Senate Committee investigating activities in his ministry over the past eight years straight in the eyes and tells its members that he sees absolutely nothing wrong with being a prime beneficiary of his decisions as a public officer. Worse still the governor of Gombe State, Alhaji Muhammadu Danjuma Goje goes one better than the minister down this road of infamy and performs a ceremony in which he gives himself a cheque of over 200 million Naira! and gives his deputy another cheque of over 100 million! as part of a most outrocious pension package. Talk about political brigandage!
Surveying all these alone, it is difficult, if not impossible to escape the conclusion that not only do Nigerians in general and their leaders in particulars talk too much; we talk too much rubbish and almost always never practice the virtues we preach.
I have said it on these pages so many times but it cannot be said too often that the problem with Nigeria is not in its stars or in its Constitution or in its laws, warts and all. The problem is our attitude to public trust as leaders at various levels and segments of society and even as followers.
The other day a retired senior civil servant resident in Kaduna gave me a gift of a one-page document titled “The Seven Principles of Public Life” extracted from a colonial report. The first principle, which is about selflessness, says, “Holders of public office should take decisions solely in terms of the public interest. They should not do so in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family or their friends.”
The sixth principle, which talks about honesty, says, “Holders of public office have a duty to declare any private interests relating to their public duties and to take steps to resolve any conflicts arising in a way that protects the public.”
When our leaders neglect agriculture as the mainstay of our economy because there is so much easy petrodollar to fiddle with, when they see nothing wrong with abusing public office for private gain, when they defy court rulings that go against the wishes and interests of the powers that be, when they advocate the dissolution of the country because things do not work the way they want them, when they do all these and others more, it is only right to conclude that they have never heard of these seven principles of public life, much less be guided by them.
But even if they have, these are principles that cannot be legislated upon because they are attitudinal. We can rewrite our Constitution and amend our laws till Kingdom come, but unless we learn to imbibe the right attitude towards public office, our society will never become a happy one to live in whether or not the country remains one.
Pound Sterling not Naira Last week’s column on Chief Gani Fawehinmi’s 70th birthday said Mr. Bala Abashe, a worker, sued Mr. Andrew Obeya, the Secretary of the then Benue/Plateau State, for N70,000 and N50,000 for adultery and assault respectively in their famous case in 1969. The correct denomination was the Nigerian Pound not Naira. At the time of the case Nigeria’s currency was still denominated in Pounds and Shillings. The keyboard of the computer I used to type the script had the Pound Sterling sign alright, but each time I keyed it in it typed the sign # instead of the Pound sign. Apparently the editor assumed this meant the Naira sign. The mistake is regretted.
|