1st April, 2022
The Buhari government will not be able to deliver the Ajaokuta steel rolling mill as promised, the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Mr. Olamilekan Adegbite said on Thursday.
The minister gave the honest verdict while fielding questions from State House correspondents during the 34th session of the State House briefing held at the State House in Abuja.
Adegbite identified the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war as major unplanned events that scuttled the efforts of Buhari’s administration to complete the project.
“Where we are today, we may not be able to get Ajaokuta to work but I pray that we can start something permanent.
“I’ve said it before. When we came back from Russia, yes, I went to the public and said, ‘look we will deliver Ajaokuta before the end of this tenure’.
“And I pray that I’ll have a chance to go back and apologize and explain what happened to the people before I leave office.
“It is due to no fault of ours. Everybody was ready to go, but unfortunately, COVID came in. So, it is a force majeure.”
In 2020, the Minister had said the Ajaokuta Steel Mill was 90 percent complete and may be functional by early 2023.
The development of the steel mill was started in the 1970s but has evaded completion several decades after.
The current revitalization plan for the steel mill was kick-started in October 2019, when a Nigerian delegation, led by President Muhammadu Buhari, attended the Russia-Africa summit in Sochi, Russia.
In Sochi, President Buhari invited the Russians to help complete the steel mill on a Build-Operate-Transfer model, Adegbite said.
The Russians agreed and were set to arrive in Nigeria in March 2020, with the project to last for about two years.
However, the coronavirus pandemic threw a spanner into the wheels as the countries closed their borders to halt the virus and the Russians were unable to fly into Nigeria for an on-site audit.
Ajaokuta Steel Project, which began in 1979, is located on 24,000 hectares of sprawling green-field land-mass.
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 Nigeria’s economy into an industrial one.
Ajaokuta Steel Plant, tagged as the “Bedrock of Nigeria’s industrialization” has eluded many administrations since 1979.