By Nneka Nwogwugwu
The Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, (BPE) Mr. Alex Okoh, has explained how the BPE has made efforts to receive the Ajaokuta steel project.
Okoh in an interview conducted by the Vanguard, said the Federal government has set up an inter-agency committee basically to advise on the best way to resuscitate Ajaokuta.
NatureNews recalls that the foundation stone of the Ajaokuta Integrated Steel plant was laid in 1980 by a former President of Nigeria, Shehu Shagari, on 24,000 hectares of land in Kogi state.
Findings revealed that for the period that the project has lingered, the federal government had sunk over $10bn to start milling.
The project, which as far back as 1994 had reached 98 per cent completion, has the capacity to provide direct employment for 10,000 technical staff and indirectly 500,000 unskilled upstream and downstream employment, when in operation.
Sadly, till date, with all these huge investments, the multi-billion-dollar project has not produced a single steel product that can contribute to the development of Nigeria.
In detailing the efforts made so far in 2022, Okoh said, “Ajaokuta was not privatised, Ajaokuta was concessioned, and incidentally, unlike the ports, the concession was not handled by the BPE. It was handled by the Ministry. You see, the government is one.
“When a problem crystalises, the government must come together to resolve it. The matter itself also is subjudice at least when you are talking about the ownership, all the settlement arrangements around Ajaokuta, Delta Steel, and of course the Itakpe and they are all connected. All of those infrastructure and facilities are connected.
“There is an on-going effort to untangle and unbundle them because Delta Steel itself has gone to pursue a different track of resolution; but to just sort of combine with all of them and resolve the issues with Global Infrastructure Nigeria Limited.
“That effort is on-going to have a sort of out-of-court settlement. His Excellency, the President, has also set up an inter- agency committee basically to advise on the best way to resuscitate Ajaokuta itself following the out-of-court settlement with GINL.
“ Thankfully, we are part of this committee at this point, and I think that we will be able to advise given our expertise as the government agency that actually has the mandate and the skills to handle such complex transactions, on how best to address Ajaokuta.
“Some of the ideas that we are looking at involve the numerous business opportunities that abound in Ajaokua-about 42 to 43 of them which are all steel-related. But the issue is: do you want to run the plant as one integrated unit? Or do you want to run them as different businesses? So, we will look at the different options and we will advise government appropriately.
“But again, just like the Aluminum Smelter Company of Nigeria (ALSCON) in Ikot-Abasi, Akwa-Ibom State, I am very hopeful that once we are able to resolve the legal ownership issues we should be able to bring up Ajaokuta operationally in a very short period of time.”
Also recall that in April 2022, the Federal government approved N853 million for Ajaokuta Steel concession consultants.
“However, today, the council has approved the award of a contract not just for Ajaokuta but for the iron ore in Itakpe,” he said.
“We believe that with this development, we would have made significant steps in bringing back to life both the Ajaokuta and the iron ore company in Itakpe and moving forward the industrial revolution of Nigeria.
“Because, when these two complexes begin to function, then, not only are we going to serve money in terms of foreign exchange, but we are going to see a lot of industrial development and also technology transfer,” Lai Mohammed, Minister of information and Culture said.
