FG tasked on fashion, creative industry investment

The Creative Director of C. N. Daniels Couture, Nnamdi Daniels has called for policies that would develop the fashion industry in the country.

He said this at the 10th anniversary of the fashion outfit in Abuja at the weekend.

Also known as Jacket King, the entrepreneur, who said they create  clothes for beauty and for glory, noted that some government policies stifle the growth of the industry.

He urged steady engagement between the policy makers to create a pathway for prosperity through boosting the industry.

He said that among such policies was the ban of foreign fabrics into the country.

He said the industry if properly harnessed has the potential to shore up the economic fortunes of the country and improve its foreign exchange.

Daniels his organisation has made impact that had disrupted the fashion industry in the country.

He said, “There has been a major disruption in the fashion industry. Before now, fashion in Nigeria was for the really, really uneducated. But there’s been a major push from people now, even undergraduates trying to become fashion designers at the moment.

“So Nigerian fashion has really grown and the world has accepted it. People are now getting used to our style and our ability to create contemporary wares.

“When we looked at it, we realized that tailors, most of the tailors we have in Nigeria actually not exactly based in the urban cities. So what we’ve done is ensure that with our project go to the suburban especially places like Ilorin where people learn fashion from the young age.

“So what we’ve done is we take them, we bring them to the city teach

them how to work with us and before long these guys are so good and they start helping their families too and become breadwinners.”

He said currently they have done over 70 people from Ilorin so far in the last four years.

“It’s a project we started four years ago and we still have more. At the moment we have some people we trained who are from Ilorin too, who are right now in Kampala. That’s where they’re working from,” he said.

He said there were big plans to expand the brand apart from helping the community giving back.

He said they were ensuring that they have more people who are training and putting back and that they are taken off the streets.

He, however, listed some challenges including government policies.

He said, “We have so many policies that don’t favour fashion designers, especially the ban on fabric. It makes it difficult for us to access a textile because we don’t have any good textile here in Nigeria.

“And then power is an issue. There is no steady power in any part of the country. So that’s a major issue. We also have the issue of access to funding because a lot of people are coming into the industry and they need funds, but there’s no access to funding.

On what the government should do, he said, “I’ll tell them to stop giving out money stop giving out that money in the name of poor people. Give it to people who actually employ people. Not to people you can’t give money and say you’re giving to poor people for crying out loud making people poorer by doing that.

“But when you give it to an entrepreneur who knows what he’s doing and give him mandates, okay I’m giving you a hundred million with a charge that in next 10 years I need you to have created a hundred more of you.”