ABSTRACT
For most local crafts and industries in southeastern Nigeria, colonialism ushered in a period of struggle for survival. Improved transportation systems in southeastern Nigeria were a kind of Pandora’s Box to the manufacturers of crafts and local industrial products in the region. At the initial stage, improved transportation facilitated the marketing of local products throughout the region and far beyond. The manufacturers enjoyed economic boom as a result of wider circulation of their products. However and unfortunately, the distribution of European imports, which had hitherto been limited by costly, inefficient transportation (which had protected the local products), rapidly increased, flooding Igbo markets. The result was an unequal and unhealthy competition between the local products and European imports—textiles, pottery and iron products, ceramics, salt, beverages, cosmetics, and others.
