At the 2024 ‘Wear Nigeria’ three day campaign, the founder of the initiative, Austin Aimakhu, has urged government and private bodies to support the creative sector, particularly, the traditional textile industry. Aimakhu made this call during the event held in Lagos recently. According to him, enough is not being done to grow the Nigerian textile tradition industry.
He said: “The creative economy is a huge sector as cultural expressions are so critical. We need to go big on converting cultural expressions to money, which has been done to a large extent in our music industry and our Nollywood. So, we need to introduce conscious policy interventions and efforts to develop this area.
The creative economy could be the next oil if we have appropriate policies.” He continued: The Nigeria textile tradition is a critical sub-sector in the fashion ecosystem. We need government policies intervention in this sector to make it happen; we need technology, financing, education to be able to develop our Nigerian textile tradition.
Wear Nigeria is basically the Nigerian textile tradition, aso oke, adire, Igbulu, akwete, akwa ocha and different types of other wool and prints that are indigenous to us in Nigeria. This sector is a means of empowerment that is being overlooked. “The sector employs a lot of young people and women.
It starts with intervening in the lives of these people, assisting them in what they need to grow such as technology, finance and other forms of policy inter.