Shoe making can create at least 280,000 jobs for Nigerian youth if government supports the leather industry through good policies, Alhaji Bashir Danyaro, Board of Trustees chairman of Leather and Allied Products Association of Nigeria (LAPAN), has said.
Danyaro who said this during the ongoing summit on the leather industry, noted that the youth can easily learn shoe-making and other leather-related manufacturing jobs with little help.
"There is no single factory that produces one million shoes in a year. So, that means we are going to create 70 shoe companies to be able to produce 70 million shoes. So, if each of the 70 factories employs four thousand workers, you can imagine the number of people that can be employed," he said
Director of FAMAD, a popular shoe-making company that used to be known as Bata, Muhammad Haruna, lamented that the company and its peers are no longer what they used to be due to influx of foreign shoes.
"So let our government support us. Throwing open our borders for all manner of goods to come in is not the best. Even the America that is propagating all these, if you want to take things into their country, if you look at the list of the things you are supposed to comply with before you get anything into their country, you will know that you are not competitive. But here, they will impart it on our government and upon us that it is a free world so let’s trade openly. It is not like that. The reality on the ground is not what they are telling you," said Muhammad Kabir Haruna.
However, El-Habib Onifade, a panelist at the summit, said the problem with the industry is that the players have allowed the Chinese to beat them in the game of knowing the taste of the consumers and giving them what they want.
"What I can tell you is that we allowed Chinese to come and they know the taste of our customers. That is why they come here with bright colours, with styles of high-heeled platforms and all those things for our own people. We didn’t understand it. We didn’t even bother about investigating the taste of our people and the size of the market," he said.
Source: Daily Trust