By Bankole Taiwo, Abeokuta
As part of its mandate to constantly promote the non-oil export in the country, Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC) Ogun State, last Thursday trained over 400 participants on easy and modern way of Adire production, labelling, packaging as well as marketing of Adire products in order to meet with the challenge of international competitors
The training had in attendance entrepreneurs and investors in the local Adire fabric also call tye and dye. Adire is popularly produced by the Yoruba in the South West, especially by the Egba tribe from Abeokuta, Ogun State capital.
Speaking during the training, Export Assistance Office Deputy Director, NEPC Abeokuta, Mr Samson Idowu said that the capacity building training on promoting Adire value-chain for export competitiveness was part of the council’s target to ensure the enhancement of participants’ skills in the Adire business for the betterment of the economy.
His words: “Our major mandate is to promote non-oil export and we know that Adire is one of the heritage product that people are knowledgeable and competent in promoting and we see a lot of potentials in this, that’s why we gathered adire makers, designers, distributors to learn new trade on how to enhance their skills in Adire so that at the end of the day they can earn more money and improve the local economy so that the trade of adire as second hand cloth will be a thing of the past.”
Idowu continued, “I can assure you that this is just the beginning. For us in NEPC, we don’t believe in politicising development or politicising issues. We are driven by performance/result and that’s why we have decided to go to the Adire people to know their problems and their challenges before the roll out of interventions.
“Now we have known their challenges, this is the beginning of overcoming the challenges. We have availed them generalised information on how to engage marketing, how to enhance processing and export,” he added.
The Iyalode of Yorubaland, Chief Mrs Alaba Lawson who spoke to Journalists at the event appealed to the Federal Government to tap into the enormous opportunities abound in the Adire industry for economic growth.
According to Iyalode, investing in the Adire industry would reduce degradation of local Adire products in international community.
“I think we need to stick to buying our home made Nigerian goods, and I think it still falls back on the government , what are they doing when foreign Adire products are coming in, not only that, the infrastructure too must be produced by the government because this is what is making Adire products expensive.”