The Senate’s five-year import-ban proposal may raise costs and disrupt businesses that depend on fabrics local producers cannot supply.
Nigeria’s Senate has urged the Federal Government to impose a five-year ban on textile-fabric imports to revive domestic cotton production and mills. The resolution does not itself impose a ban. The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) warns that a blanket prohibition could damage downstream industries before domestic supply can replace imports at the necessary scale and quality.
Downstream industries carry the exposure
CPPE estimates Nigeria’s fashion, garment-making, and tailoring ecosystem at about ₦10 trillion, supporting roughly 10 million direct and indirect livelihoods. While these are CPPE estimates rather than official national accounts, they illustrate the activity that depends on imported fabric used by designers, tailors, garment producers, retailers, embroiderers, and small enterprises.
The think tank says restrictions would also affect furniture, interior design, hospitality, healthcare and automotive upholstery. Its estimated ₦7 trillion furniture and interiors market relies on specialised fabrics often unavailable locally.
CPPE expects supply shortages, costlier inputs and weaker competitiveness. Smaller firms unable to carry large inventories would face the greatest exposure.
Existing tariffs have not solved the mill problem
Imported textiles already face combined import duty and import-adjustment tax of 35% to 45%, according to CPPE. Yet local mills have not regained competitiveness, pointing to production economics as the binding constraint.
The group cites high energy costs, expensive credit, weak infrastructure, obsolete machinery, inconsistent policy, smuggling and insecurity in cotton-growing areas. A ban would not directly resolve these constraints.
Build capability before restricting supply
CPPE proposes a value-chain response: rebuild cotton output through improved seed, mechanisation, extension and guaranteed offtake; provide low-cost finance for technology upgrades; strengthen anti-smuggling enforcement; and use public procurement to create demand for locally made uniforms and textiles.
A Textile Competitiveness Fund, financed from textile-related import taxes, could support that transition. The test is whether Nigeria adopts phased local-content incentives tied to new capacity—or restricts imports before mills can serve markets that would lose access.
