Nigeria’s quest for industrialisation may remain a mirage for a long time to come, as there is a deluge of evidence to suggest that the country is not prepared to join the rest of the world in this all important sector.
The sorry state of the Nigerian Iron and steel sector stirs pain and disappointment in the minds of the patriot. The Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited (ASCL) , perhaps the flagship of Nigeria’s attempt at steel production, an investment worth over $8 billion, is rotting away with successive governments not knowing what to do about it.
The massive steel complex was constructed over 40 years ago with a 68km road network, 24 housing estates on the project. Some of the estates are said to have over 1,000 homes, a seaport, a 110mw power generation plant, there are 43 separate plants in Ajaokuta alone. It is estimated that if Ajaokuta becomes operational, it will create 500,000 jobs.
According to the executive vice chairman of the National Agency for Science Engineering and Infrastructure (NASENI) Prof. Mohammed Sani Haruna, the problem started when the priorities and processes where wrongly headed.
“Instead of commencing with the Billet mill expected to process iron ore from Itakpe as raw material to the finished steel product, we commenced by importing billets. To my knowledge, the heavy section and medium section Billet mills were never completed and hence throughout the brief operation of ASCL Raw Material from Itakpe or Iron Ore from anywhere in Nigeria was never used.”
The NASENI boss also revealed the international conspiracy with local connection of course that rendered the project prostate.
The Ajaokuta steel that was said to have reached 98 percent completion as far back as 1994, had not produced single steel till date even as the federal government had spent over $10 billion over 34 years and would require another $2 billion to complete the remaining two per cent of the plant.
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A report by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) shows that Nigeria currently imports steel, aluminum products and associated derivatives of approximately 25 metric tonnes per annum estimated at $4.5 billion.
According to a researcher, “Nigerian iron has very low iron concentration. Agbaja has the largest iron ore deposit in Nigeria with about 2 billion tonnes but the Agbaja iron ore has high phosphate content. Phosphate can cause brittleness in steel making it fracture, thus Agbaja was abandoned for Itakpe.
“Itakpe iron ore has no issues with phosphate but has low iron content, thus to make steel with Nigeria iron ore, a process called “beneficiation” has to be done to process the Itakpe ores to raise its iron content to meet the required standard for steel production.”
Apparently this process was never completed despite the establishment of the National Iron Ore Mining Company (NIOMCO) a 2.15 metric tonnes beneficiation plant designed to process the low-quality iron ore from Itakpe to iron ore suitable for Ajaokuta Steel.
