The day Nigeria becomes a player in the ready-to-wear market for the West, the US dollar can flood the Nigerian market and raise the supply to demand equation, she was quoted as saying by Nigerian media reports.

Nigeria’s cotton, textile and garment industry may help boost the value of the naira if properly explored, according to Olajumoke Familoni, president ICLED International USA and ICLED Business School Lekki in Lagos. With high demand for bright and alluring African prints, garment makers need to learn everything it takes to pass the quality check, she said.

ICLED stands for International Centre for Leadership and Entrepreneurship Development.

Garment firms must be conversant with electronic data interchange (EDI) as a means of identifying each garment, she said.

The decline of the textile and apparel industry started from 2003, and has resulted in Nigeria spending over $2 billion annually on imported textiles. However, the sector started picking up with government funding of N100 billion in 2010.

The capacity utilisation in the sector has increased from 29.10 per cent in 2010 to 49.7 per cent in 2011 and is 50.2 per cent now, according to figures from the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)