Our heritage who will come to our aid?

A FEW years ago, Kano was the centre of the hides and skins market and home to many tanneries from where leather products were exported to Europe and Asia.
Tens of thousands were employed in the tanneries and related businesses from where they made a good living.
But all that belong to history as today, many elderly tannery-owners are in penury, their firms shut down.
Much of the blame, the old tannery owners say, lies with the Export Expansion Grant (EEG) policy grant of the Federal Government intended to boost a leading non-oil export commodity such as hides and skins in Kano State.
The old tannery owners and shoe makers whose businesses face imminent collapse are now crying out, asking the authorities to rescue them from the hands of corrupt public officials and their foreign collaborators.
One of them, Alhaji Kamilu Ila, who owns Globus Tannery in Challawa Industrial Layout, has raised alarm on the deleterious effects of the policy.
He said flaws in the EEG policy and corruption among government functionaries had favoured only a handful of mostly- foreign tannery owners, while what was left of the local industry was being steadily destroyed.
“Today, this traditional sector is being wiped out because local manufacturers cannot compete with companies that receive massively-inflated export grants.
“This has worsened the unemployment situation in Kano and other parts of the country.
“Some companies buy the skins locally at prices that are more expensive than international sales prices with the intention to inflate invoices and thereby, collect huge grants.
The problem is how the EEG is implemented. Under the policy, an exporter of skin gets 30 per cent of invoice-value as incentive.
“In other words, it is like saying that for every $100,000 worth of export, you get $30,000 free gift from government as incentive.
“So the question is: who determines the value of export?
“The exporter determines it.
“He is handed a blank cheque to do so. Skin export is not like oil, gold or any of these exportable commodities quoted in the international market.
“It is these monies running into billions of naira that they use to out-price us in the local leather market.
“I inherited this industry, which used to employ over 150 workers from my father in the 80s shortly after I left the university.
“Today, we can’t operate effectively because of the abuse in the system.”
Also aggrieved that the EEG policy may sound the death knell to his business is United Kingdom- trained Malam Bashir Danyaro.
An expert in leather technologist, Danyaro, in 2000 set up Whanu Shoe Factory, which employed 200 workers before the EEG policy.
“ Regrettably, today, I can no longer buy leather in the local market because I have been out-priced by expatriates in the industry.”
Danyaro, who used to produce shoes for the Nigerian Army says if government fails to intervene, his outfit may not survive.
Another industrialist, Dr. Aliyu Nabegu also lamented that the EEG policy emerged without the input of critical stakeholders.
Pointing out that the textile industry collapsed due to the abuse of a policy similar to the EEG, Nabegu wondered why the Federal Government would create a monster to undermine the socio –economic development of the country.
A consultant to the Tannery Industrial Sector in Kano, Dr. Muhammad Sagagi also argued that whatever informed the EEG policy was no longer tenable today.
“We should learn from the experience of the cotton sector, where it is now easier to import it from China than to go to nearby Funtua.”
Danyaro, Nabegu and other Kano spoke for industrialists whose tanneries have been struggling to survive in the Kano industrial layouts in Challawa, Sharada and Bompai, Kano.
They say if the EEG regime stays, Kano, and the country, which also relies on hides, and skin would not be relieved of unemployment, which is behind youth restiveness and violent crime in the polity.
They want the EEG abrogated and funds for it used to provide social services such control of toxic waste emissions from the tanneries and other socially desirable projects like roads, water and electricity generation plants.
About a decade ago, there were over 30 functional tanneries in the northern part of the country.
Today, with the exception of G.B Tannery, Globus Tannery, B.B Tannery, Daram Tannery, God’s Little Tannery, Fine Leather, Kano Tannery and Multitan that are partially active, all others have gone under.
Head of the Kano Tannery Council, Alhaji Lawal Sule Garo, who admitted he was forced to sell his tannery due to insufficient funds, disagrees with calls for the scrapping of the EEG. He said the Tannery Industrial Sector, just like other non –oil exporters of cashew nuts, cocoa, palm produce, shrimps, snails, and sesame produce required the EEG incentives to remain in business.
“What I want those complaining to know is that the EEG is not a handout; they have to earn it through the due process.
“ So anybody calling for the scraping of the EEG is not saying the real truth. They are not making it either because they lack managerial capacity or they lack working capital."