Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has urged the Federal Government to ban the importation of Chinese Adire into the country, to save the local market of Adire fabrics.

Obasanjo made this appeal in his opening speech on Monday in Abeokuta at the ‘Canada Trade Mission ‘24’ pre-conference session, begging the government to do its best to protect local production of Adire from imminent “bastardisation” by the Chinese.

The former president urged that all materials that can be produced locally must be protected while lamenting that the materials for producing Adire which were sourced in Kano, Kaduna and Ado-Ekiti are no longer available.

The elder statesman appealed to the FG to revive the textile industries in Nigeria to make the raw materials for Adire production available for local manufacturers and that formal training institutions for learning Adire production should be established.

The programme was organised by Solteque Nigeria Ltd where Realtor Babatunde Adeyemo of the Pelican Valley and Mrs Oluwatosin Oloko, Permanent Secretary Ogun State Ministry of Culture & Tourism among others were also guest speakers.

He said, “I want to appreciate the Traditional rulers who attended this event, you have shown that you are real custodians of Culture. People are saying China want to bastardise our Adire product, if not that we don’t value what we have. I want to commend the Ogun State government for the initiative of Oja Itoku for the Adire market. It is good but not good enough if we don’t have Adire sellers in the market.

“The clothes for the production of Adire is in Nigeria where they used to buy it in Kano, Kaduna and Ado-Ekiti but there is nothing like that anymore. If we want to produce Adire, where would we get the clothes to produce it? What we have to do is that the Adire sellers, manufacturers and those who promote it, let us join our hands together. What the government needs to do for us is not much. The first thing the government need to do for us is the revival of the Textile industry, let us beg them to do that for us.

“The second one is the formal training institution where people will be learning how to produce Adire and get certified at the end of the period of their learning. Let us beg the government to do their possible best to protect our local production of Adire so that the Chinese will not have access to bastardise it for us.

Also speaking, the Chief Executive Officer of Pelican Valley Nigeria Limited, Dr. Babatunde Adeyemo, emphasised the potentials of real estate business as a vehicle to attract Nigerian investors living abroad, improve nation’s foreign exchange and also the Internally Generated Revenue base of Ogun State through direct assessment taxes of investors, and jobs and wealth creation for present and future generations.

Adeyemo said, “I want to show you the opportunity in the real estate investment. This is an avenue for you to see someone who have successfully invested in Real estate and want to exhibit it to enlighten and motivate others. God gave me the privilege to start real estate business with modest amount of money and also gave us opportunity to be known in Ogun, Nigeria and globally.

“One of our clients is the convener of this event. Our relationship with him is what brought him back to Nigeria, after he had bought the land and built his home in our Estate, he was convinced to come back home. He established company and also brought the initiative of this event in order to help his people, and not only him.”

According to him, we have been able to drag over 400 Nigerians in Diaspora back home. From his own camp, (Manitoba) they are close to 100 people that have bought land from us.

He explained that as we want to export Adire, we don’t really know that real estate is one of the areas that is really explorable, Real estate is something that people can also take advantage of and export to bring more development to Ogun State and Nigeria in general