Adams Oshiomhole has urged President Tinubu to mandate locally-made uniforms for Nigeria’s armed forces, arguing the shift would revive manufacturing, create jobs and reduce dependency on imports.
Adams Oshiomhole has called on President Bola Tinubu to direct the nation’s armed forces and other paramilitary agencies to abandon foreign-made uniforms and instead use locally produced textiles. Speaking on Monday in Kaduna at the 37th Annual National Education Conference of the National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria (NUTGTWN), he stressed the move would boost job creation and industrial growth.
“If we wear what we produce and produce what we wear, we can employ 20 million Nigerians,” Oshiomhole said. The conference, themed “Industry, Labour and National Development,” also saw the renaming of the union’s five-storey headquarters in Kaduna as the “Adams Oshiomhole Textile Labour House.”
Oshiomhole urged tangible policy shifts, saying: “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 lamented that what was once a vibrant textile industry in Kaduna, employing over 27,000 workers across three shifts daily, now struggles due to “reckless government policies” and unguarded trade liberalisation.
He warned that the collapse of manufacturing had negative social consequences: “When people had jobs, nobody cared about religion. Today, with factories shut and millions idle, we have produced anger, not cotton,” he said. Oshiomhole also praised Tinubu’s foreign exchange reforms for curtailing currency arbitrage, stressing that the pursuit of workers’ welfare is a patriotic duty.