The Chartered Institute of Professional Printers of Nigeria (CIPPON) has said that Nigeria imports N3 trillion worth of papers annually.
The institute also said the country prints over N1.2 billion books annually with a significant number out of that printed outside the country.
The President of CIPPON and Chairman in Council, Malomo Olugbemi, disclosed this on Wednesday in Abeokuta, Ogun State, during the 2nd Nigerian National Printers Conference.
Olugbemi expressed concern that a large number of printing jobs, including ballot papers, are done abroad to the detriment of the indigenous professional printers.
This, he said, is not due to lack of capacity of the Nigerian printers but “because people are taking advantage of outdated government policy.”
He noted that a national policy would solve significant portion of the current challenges facing the industry.
“Are we going to continue to be helpless and hapless? We can also talk about our major raw material, paper, that the cost has tripled in the last one year and over N3 trillion worth is imported into the country annually, constituting a strain on our foreign exchange?,” he said.
