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The federal government has stressed on its seriousness to finally open the Ajaokuta complex, which in over 39 years of its establishment, has not produced a single, bar, coil or rod.
The government says it wants to transform the Ajaokuta from an embarrassment into a viable asset. Kayode Fayemi, the mines and steel development minister concedes, with significant understatement, that the first 30-plus years of Ajaokuta “did not quite work out as planned, which is the Nigerian story sometimes,” assuring however that fixing it is now a national priority.
“Ajaokuta is central to our diversification strategy,” he said in a statement. Building up domestic steelmaking, he said, is “the least we could do for ourselves as a country and for our manufacturing sector.”
The hope that the steel plant will see the break of a new dawn can be seen as workers are furiously cleaning a decorative fountain in front of the executive office of Nigeria’s largest steel complex. An onsite power plant is being repaired by electricians. Others around the facility are clearing brush.
In the middle of it all, administrator Abdul-Akaba Sumaila is meeting in turn with the 20 or so people crowding his waiting room, a mix of union officials, local politicians and job applicants.
The dilapidated factory complex was built with Soviet assistance. It has sucked up $8 billion in public investment and been hamstrung by repeated stops and starts, ownership changes, poor governance and sheer incompetence.
Ajaokuta Steel Project is located on 24,000 hectares of sprawling land. The Steel Plant itself is built on 800-hectares of land. The chosen Technology for Steel Production is the time tested Blast-Furnace Basic Oxygen Furnace route for Steel Production.
The Ajaokuta integrated steel complex was conceived and steadily developed with the vision of erecting a Metallurgical Process Plant cum Engineering Complex with other auxiliaries and facilities. The complex is meant to be used to generate important upstream and downstream industrial and economic activities that are critical to the diversification of our economy into an industrial one. Ajaokuta Steel Plant is therefore aptly tagged as the Bedrock of Nigeria’s industrialization.
