The Nigerian Senate has resolved to push for a complete prohibition on imported textile goods and has called on the federal government to mobilize resources, regulatory authority, and institutional support behind a comprehensive revival of a manufacturing sector that once stood as one of the country’s most important employers and economic contributors before decades of neglect, bad policy, and import competition reduced it to a shadow of its former scale.
The resolutions were adopted after an extended chamber debate on a motion sponsored by Senator Katung Marshall, who presented a detailed account of the industry’s rise, its systematic destruction, and the human and economic cost of allowing a sector that employed more than 500,000 Nigerians at its peak to collapse with minimal government resistance.
The story Katung told began promisingly. Nigeria established its first large-scale textile mill in Kaduna in 1957, and government policies introduced through the 1960s and 1970s that restricted competing imports attracted private investors and created the conditions for rapid industrial expansion. By the height of its success, the country had approximately 167 textile mills operating nationwide, making the industry the second-largest employer of labor in the country behind only the federal government itself. Kaduna earned a national reputation as Nigeria’s textile capital, with major manufacturers including Arewa Textiles, Fantext Nigeria, Nortex Nigeria, Supertex, and United Nigerian Textiles all maintaining significant operations in the state.
The deterioration began in the late 1990s as a combination of obsolete equipment, chronic electricity shortages, inadequate working capital, and the gradual withdrawal of protective trade policy eroded the competitive position of domestic manufacturers. The industry’s situation deteriorated dramatically after import restrictions were removed in 2010, opening the market to a flood of cheaper goods from China, Indonesia, Taiwan, and other manufacturing centers that undercut Nigerian producers across virtually every product category. Katung said that by 2007, more than 7,000 workers had been displaced by the closure of major mills, and the sector that had once ranked third in size on the entire African continent had been reduced to generating a fraction of its former economic output.
Senators called for immediate government action on multiple fronts. A complete ban on textile imports was the headline demand, positioned as the foundational condition for any revival strategy. Increased Bank of Industry financing for manufacturers who had survived or were attempting to restart was identified as a parallel priority, alongside deliberate policies to expand cotton cultivation and rebuild the agricultural supply chain that domestic textile manufacturing depended on. The chamber also called for urgent steps to return idle factories to productive operation.
Deputy Senate President Barau Jibrin, who presided over the session, said the revival of the textile sector had transformative potential for employment and economic diversification that extended far beyond the factories themselves, touching agricultural communities supplying raw materials, logistics networks, retail ecosystems, and the broader economic fabric of states in which textile manufacturing had once been the organizing industrial activity. He pledged that the chamber would maintain active oversight of implementation to ensure the resolutions produced concrete government action rather than accumulating in the record as aspirations without consequence.
