Textile, Wearing Apparel, and Leather Sub-sectors are discussed in this article. We hope you find it informative and helpful for your research.
Textile and Clothing Industry
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Clothing, as well as food and shelter, rank as the three necessities of man. This makes the textile, wearing apparel, and leather industry in Nigeria to be unique and significant.
Clothing is indispensable to human beings both for purposes of protection from adverse weather and enhancement of appearance.
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In many developing countries of the world, the cotton textile industry is usually a pioneer in modern manufacturing. Using Nigeria as a case study, the first large-scale textile enterprise to be established in Nigeria was founded in 1957.
Long before the emergence of this industry and up to the 1960s, the Nigerian economy had been predominantly agricultural.
Cotton was then produced in sufficient quantities to satisfy domestic needs while the excess was exported to the world market.
The two earliest mills in the country were Kaduna Textile Limited, Kaduna, and the Nigerian Textile Mills Limited, Ikeja. The industry now consists of about 178 mills, over half of which process cotton fabrics while the others process various hybrids of synthetic and natural fabrics.
The industry is now very large and diversified in outlook as it also creates employment for a greater percentage of the population.
The industry is linked to clothing, furnishing cordage, bagging, chemicals, and petrochemical industries. It is also strategic in terms of the nation’s overall industrialization efforts because of its high absorptive capacity for engineering goods and services. It catalyzes achieving all-around industrial take-off in a developing country such as Nigeria.
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Apart from providing job opportunities, it contributes to manpower development and training, applied technology, and industrialization.
Textile plants are located in many states of the Federation, but Lagos has the highest concentration with 93 mills located there.
Textile mills in Nigeria produce assorted materials and products from natural fibers such as natural polymers like viscose, rubber, acetate triacetate, and synthetics like polyester, polyamide, nylon, acrylics, polypropylene, and waste yarn.
In a fully justified sense when it comes to wearing apparel, what people wear is often influenced by creed, religion, sex age customs, etc.
There has been a proliferation of garment types and designs in recent times. Given this development, there has been a steady but gradual growth of the number of large-scale garment manufacturing plants from eight in 1962 to thirty-six in 1977, one hundred in 1989, three hundred in 1995, and about six thousand in the 2000s. Research shows that about 90% of all wearing apparel businesses in Nigeria are owned by indigenous sole proprietors.
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Furthermore looking at leather, footwear, and leather goods, the first industrial-scale leather tanning plant was established in Kano in the early 1950s.
The tanning industry has important linkages with the other sectors of the economy. It integrates backward to the livestock and meat industry by way of utilizing hides and skins with the by-products of the meat industry which was its basic raw materials and integrates forward to footwear and leather products industries by supplying them with finished leather as basic raw materials.
There are twenty-three mechanized tanneries and twenty-seven major footwear and leather goods manufacturers in Nigeria.
Footwear and leather goods industries manufacture shoes, sandals, belts, purses, handbags, suitcases, and other travel goods.
Generally, the scope and intensity of the textile, wearing apparel, and leather sub-sector is concerned is rather limited and inconsistent with the importance and contribution of the sub-sector to Nigeria’s industrial output.
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A documented report in 1999 recommends that the government, through the Ministries of Science and Technology and Education should mobilize necessary financial resources to enable local research institutes and universities to intensify their activities in the areas of natural and synthetic fibers development and production, chemicals, and dye-stuffs research, and upgrading of indigenous textile and leather processing technologies.
