Opinion: Ajaokuta In Our Hands Again

314
Spread the love

By Tunji Adegboyega.

If I had not visited the Ajaokuta Steel Complex in Ajaokuta, Kogi State, before, perhaps I would not always be passionate about the abandonment that the place as well as the other steel plants in the country has suffered. Ignorance in high places, corruption and the ‘I don’t care’ attitude of our leaders have all contributed immensely to our underdevelopment through the neglect of the steel industry.

I will not dwell much on corruption in this matter because it is a familiar topic in our country. Today, even a dullard in form three would analyse how corruption has stunted the country’s growth. What I call “I don’t care’ attitude (or what one of my seniors in the secondary school used to refer to as our attitude of ‘I don’tcaritism’ and which we applauded in our ignorance because the English man is yet to invent such word) is also well known. I will however expatiate on the ignorance aspect and readers may be stunned just as I was when I heard the story; I mean a true life story as distinct from fiction.

Members of an organisation, the Steel Writers Association of Nigeria (STEWAN) undertook a tour of all the steel plants in the country either in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s. I was part of that tour which lasted about a week, as a member of the association. At Ajaokuta, we trekked on land and underground; we rode in a bus; we moved by rail; yet, we could not get to see everything there because the place, as its name implies, is indeed a complex; so complex that the more you look, the less you see! It was in the course of his briefing, that the helmsman of one of the steel firms in the north told us the astounding story of what happened at one of the meetings of (I think) the Armed Forces Ruling Council, the highest decision-making body in the country under military rule some years back.

He said at one of the sessions on the steel industry, one of the top military chiefs could not understand why steel was so important to the country to get the kind of attention some of the cabinet members were canvassing for the steel firms and the huge financial outlay required to make them functional! They then broke the issue down to the nitty-gritty, telling him that from aero planes to motor vehicles, the cutleries in the place, the chair he was sitting on, as well as his wrist-watch, all had steel components. It was at that point that he nodded in agreement that steel was crucial to national development! Who knows how many such other people had served at the top with the same mindset but who kept their own ignorance to themselves, whilst allowing it to trump superior argument in support of the appropriate investment in the steel sector?

But this is one of the most disappointing aspects of Nigeria. We have a country that is blessed with some of the best brains in the world; yet some of those calling the shots know next-to-nothing about anything. One would expect even a kindergarten pupil to know some of the things steel is used for if asked in the language he or she would understand. Yet, one of the people at the helm of affairs had to be tutored on the subject-matter before understanding what it is all about. How can the country develop with such ignorance at the very top?

Yet, those who conceived the idea of Nigeria having steel firms did so with the best of intentions as they saw into the future right from the late 1950s and early 1960s, and actually began preparations towards their take-off, even though they were not commissioned until some 20 years after. The attempt to have the first steel plant was shelved over political considerations of where it should be sited. However, on July 29, 1982, the fully completed Delta Steel Plant was commissioned and production started in the same year. In 1982 and 1983, the rolling mills at Jos, Katsina and Oshogbo were all commissioned and were expected to obtain their billets from Delta Steel Company at Ovwian-Aladja in Warri, Delta State. Then the Ajaokuta Steel Complex, a project on which Nigeria had sunk a hefty $10billion, according to Dr Kayode Fayemi, Minister of Solid Minerals Development, at the budget defence of the Senate Joint Committee on Power and Solid Minerals and Steel Development in February. Yet it has not been able to provide the country’s technological and other needs.

The commissioning of these steel firms was a thing of joy because, I remember vividly how some of my friends went abroad under one programme or the other in the late 1970s  and early 1980s to get them prepared for work in the steel companies. They returned with fanfare, and but for the determination of some of us to further our studies in our chosen disciplines, we would have been carried away by the allure of overseas travels after school certificate and joined the bandwagon. When they returned, they were well catered for and quartered in staff quarters built for members of staff of the steel firms. Things appeared rosy initially. Regrettably, the euphoria, like most other good things in Nigeria, lasted for only a while. A few years after, the steel industry ran into stormy waters and many of those trained abroad were thrown into the labour market. This is a typical example of how a country wastes its youths and disorientates them. Imagine the money spent to train them abroad, the expertise and all that which went down the drain. Many of them did not recover from the shock for years.

It is against this background that one should see the headway made by the Federal Government in retrieving the Ajaokuta Steel Complex, Ajaokuta, Kogi State, the mother of all the steel firms in Nigeria, as a good development. The Obasanjo government had sold the complex to Global Steel Holdings Limited (GSHL) under the privatisation exercise. But the sale was soon to be rocked by allegations of downsizing and, worse still, asset stripping, and the dispute that arose from there was taken to the International Chamber of Commerce for arbitration.

Ordinarily, the agreement reached between the Federal Government and Global Steel, which has now effectively returned Ajaokuta to Nigeria would have been another plus for the Jonathan administration which initiated the process of settlement, if it had not been blinded by the ambition of reelection (when actually the government had not delivered in its first term), and had actually seen it to conclusion. The same thing applies to the Abuja-Kaduna train service, the first ever standard gauge rail track in the country recently commissioned by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Nonetheless, as Chairman, Federal Capital Territory Committee, Senator Smart Adeyemi noted, that government deserves some credit for the work that Dr Fayemi finished. That this is coming at no cost to Nigeria is equally commendable, as Global Steel has agreed to forfeit the $1billion it had earlier asked for as damages suffered by it while running the Ajaokuta Steel Complex and the National Iron Ore Mining Company (NIOMCO), Itakpe, also in Kogi State. Equally worthy of praise is the guaranteed supply of products to Ajaokuta plant and Delta Steel Company, after which (GSHL) would sell what is left to other interested parties.

For a cash-strapped Buhari administration, this headway is significant. If anything, the government, needs all the savings it can get, particularly the foreign exchange component; because of the slump in crude oil prices. That was why the government started harping on the need for the country to diversify its economy so it could better withstand the vagaries of the international oil market. Getting Ajaokuta back is good, but it can only yield maximum dividend if the government accelerates the process of concessioning it devoid, however, of the mistakes of the past.

Unless this is done, the about 10,000 jobs that Senator Adeyemi said are currently locked up because Ajaokuta is idle would remain trapped with the attendant social risks. And if 10,000 are officially working in or connected with Ajaokuta, then it should be expected that hundreds of thousands of others would indirectly have something to do when the plant takes off, because the complex is a complete town, given its size. This is a project designed to provide its own electricity as well as supply the adjoining community. Indeed, anyone who has been there before would weep for this country seeing how wasteful our leaders can be. But that is one of the consequences of governments not earning their income. In fact, it is part of our oil curse. If the money that was spent on Ajaokuta had been earned, tax-payers would have screamed blue murder when successive governments began toying with it. But very few people care about the neglect because we all go to the Niger Delta to get money that we did not know how it got there.

Anyway, a proverb says “when a child falls, he looks forward; but when an adult falls, he looks backward” to see what made him to fall. This country is no longer a child, 56 years after independence. So, we should know what has been our stumbling block concerning the steel industry. Dr Muhammad Sanusi, the Secretary General of African Iron and Steel Association (AISA) said in an interview in 2014 that we spent N2.1trillion annually on steel import. If experts’ claim that our steel requirement in the country is above 20 million tonnes per annum and we can only produce about 300,000 tones, we should know this is a far cry from what we need. Yet, we have steel companies that have been lying idle! To crown it, we have about 22 states that can supply us with iron and steel deposits such as iron ore, coal, dolomite, limestone, marble and clay, among others. So, what are we waiting for? All these should tell us that Ajaokuta is at the heart of technological development in Nigeria. If we can get the complex back, then, we would have made some progress in this direction. But that progress can only be meaningful if we disallow the lethargy, corruption and ignorance of the past from taking the shine off the present momentum.

Credit: The Nation


Spread the love



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *