Victor Ogebyiwa Eburajolo turned forty on July 24, 1986, already recognised as a shrewd mind across Nigeria's industrial landscape. He held multiple expertises—law, business strategy, industrial relations, and planning—and served as executive secretary of the Nigeria Textile Employers.
The textile sector he oversaw was massive. It comprised sixty-two companies and employed over 750,000 workers, with hundreds of thousands more in connected trades like cotton production.
That birthday month, however, brought troubling news. The Babangida regime formally adopted the IMF and World Bank-imposed Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), a shift Eburajolo viewed with deep concern.
SAP came with harsh conditions that would demolish Nigeria's economic foundations. The country's commodity boards—which controlled cotton, groundnut, palm produce, rubber, grains, and cocoa—faced dismantling.
These boards had protected quality standards and ensured fair prices for Nigerian exports. Eburajolo recognised the catastrophe unfolding as the government prepared to expose local industries to unrestricted global competition without safeguards against dumping.
Worse arrived on January 1, 1995, when Nigeria joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Eburajolo immediately grasped that this move would devastate Nigeria's manufacturing sector, already weakened by SAP's ravages.
He didn't stay silent. He raised alarms within the textile industry and engaged labour unions about the WTO's dangers.
He also approached Alhaji Abu Gidado, then junior finance minister, whom he'd known since their textile industry days when Gidado led Arewa Textiles in Kaduna.
Gidado understood the threat and agreed to help. The two men sought a meeting with finance minister Anthony Ani to present their case.
Ani, however, dismissed their warnings. Eburajolo and Gidado explained that WTO rules contained a provision granting new members four years before full implementation kicked in.
They urged Ani to use this grace period wisely—to plan Nigeria's industrial strategy and identify the best path forward. Ani refused point blank.
He ordered immediate implementation of all WTO rules without delay. The decision proved catastrophic.
Nigeria's industries collapsed precisely as Eburajolo had predicted. The tyre sector vanished entirely, while textiles imploded.
The textile workforce plummeted from 750,000 workers to just 24,000. Eburajolo used a vivid metaphor to explain the impossibility: "A Nigerian textile company competing with international ones is like opening a shop next to a farm and buying from the farmer to sell to the public; you cannot compete with the farmer," he said.
The weaponisation of WTO rules against developing nations confirmed his darkest predictions. Industrial countries flooded African markets with their goods while erecting barriers against African exports.
When African exporters shipped goods to the United States or Europe, importers routinely found technical excuses to reject them. Rather than bear the cost of returning goods across oceans, exporters abandoned shipments entirely, absorbing total losses.
Eburajolo had foreseen all of it.
