Senator Adams Oshiomhole has urged President Bola Tinubu to compel the nation’s armed forces and paramilitary agencies to patronize locally made textiles instead of relying on imported uniforms.
Speaking in Kaduna on Monday at the 37th Annual National Education Conference of the National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria (NUTGTWN), Oshiomhole lamented the continuous importation of foreign fabrics, which he described as harmful to job creation and industrial growth.
“If we wear what we produce and produce what we wear, we can employ 20 million Nigerians,” Oshiomhole said. “That is the real meaning of putting Nigeria first.”
The conference, themed “Industry, Labour and National Development,” gathered union leaders and policymakers from across the country.
During the event, the union renamed its five-storey Kaduna headquarters formerly known as the Textile Labour House to the Adams Oshiomhole Textile Labour House, in honour of the former Edo State governor, who once served as the union’s secretary-general nearly four decades ago.
Oshiomhole called on President Tinubu to go beyond rhetoric and enforce policies that favor local industries.
“As Commander-in-Chief, the President should direct that the Nigerian Army, Navy, and Air Force wear only uniforms produced and sewn in Nigeria,” he said to loud applause from thousands of textile workers.
He recalled the golden era of Kaduna’s textile industry, which employed over 27,000 workers and operated three daily shifts, before government mismanagement and reckless trade liberalization destroyed the sector.
“Those factories didn’t die of old age; they were murdered by bad policies,” he declared.
“When we joined the World Trade Organization, we surrendered our right to protect our industries and jobs.”
Oshiomhole also praised the late Sir Ahmadu Bello, Northern Nigeria’s first premier, for his vision in establishing the Kaduna Textile Mills in the 1950s, which he said promoted self-reliance and national pride.
“Our leaders then knew it made no sense to export cotton and import clothes,” he said. “That vision created jobs and built communities.”
He linked the collapse of the industrial sector to rising insecurity, noting that joblessness had worsened poverty and social tension.
“When people had jobs, nobody cared about religion. Today, with factories shut and millions idle, we have produced anger, not cotton,” Oshiomhole added.
Commending President Tinubu’s foreign exchange reforms, he said they helped curb the influence of “emergency billionaires” who profited from currency manipulation.
“Before Tinubu, people made money without effort just with a phone call. Now, those distortions are being corrected,” he said.
Reaffirming his lifelong loyalty to the labour movement, Oshiomhole declared, “I remain a labour man for life. From age 18, I’ve known no other calling.
I will keep fighting until Nigeria returns to the path of production, not importation.”
