“Many of those women are directly involved in the processing and designing like we do here,” she says, grinning. “But you may not know until you see them ‘get dirty’ inside coloured water here.”
The women producing Adire are not only creating a livelihood for themselves and their families, but are helping in their own way to boost Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings as their products are patronised well beyond Nigeria’s shores. In the years that followed, Adire cloth production and export became intertwined with that of cocoa production in Nigeria and Ghana. Again, when cocoa prices plummeted in 1937, the inability of farmers to continue to purchase Adire led to the decline of the industry.
In Abeokuta, Iyabo Sodipe, an Adire trader, told PREMIUM TIMES that she exports the fabric to Ghana, Mali, and Ivory Coast, from where she makes as much as $1,215 annually. PREMIUM TIMES gathered from women in Itoku that the first female Adire merchant in Abeokuta was Jojolola Soetan, who died in 1932. Since her death, the practice has become a major part of entrepreneurial life among Egba women.
As the name implies, Adire Alabere refers to “adire with the needle,” a style of indigo textiles crafted with complex designs of symbols with patterned effect created by stitching the fabric by hand before submerging the textile in indigo dye. The value-chain also accommodates young artisans and undergraduates of higher institutions within the Abeokuta metropolis, she said.Komolafe Christianah, 23, is a Higher National Diploma 1 student of the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Ojere, where she is studying Accountancy. But she has no plan to look for a job upon graduation.
“I started supplying Adire material last year during the pandemic, as I had very little to do to make extra cash,” he told PREMIUM TIMES in a chat on FUNAAB main campus along Alabata Road in Abeokuta. Apart from the women who design the patterns, and students of higher institutions who serve mostly on the supply chain,Textile Beaters
“We earn between N30 and N50 per fabric, depending on the clients,” he explains in a smattering of pidgin English. “I and my colleagues make our money from ironing too but many would rather go for the old beating process,” he told PREMIUM TIMES in Yoruba. “By the time we begin to export quite well, Adire will become a money spinner for entrepreneurs in Ogun state and Nigeria as a whole. That’s why government must invest in modern technology that will aid operations.”Ms Bolatito said their biggest headache as women entrepreneurs is access to financial support to enable them to expand their businesses and acquire sophisticated equipment that would aid their operations.
Despite its huge potential, the development and export of Adire has been plagued by similar concerns militating against the growth of the larger textile ecosystem in Nigeria. In 2020, however, details from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that Nigeria’s import figures on textile and textile articles rose to N330 billion, but the nation exported N5.05 billion worth of textile goods as of the third quarter of the year.
Mr Abiodun had in 2020 urged Nigeria’s foreign missions to adopt the Adire fabric as a cultural symbol that will further project Nigeria’s rich culture to the outside world.