Ajaokuta Revival: Buhari's Unfulfilled Dream, Work for the Next President

On January 15, 2015, in Lokoja, Kogi State, President Muhammadu Buhari promised to resurrect the ailing Ajaokuta Steel Company if elected to power by March of the same year. It was during his campaign for the presidential election. As faith dictates, Buhari became President of Nigeria and was sworn in on May 29, 2015

In his words, Buhari said the campaign to “Resurrect the business that has ceased production for the past thirty-five years would allow him to create jobs for the nation's many youth and create wealth for the country". the world thought Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited, ASCL, was back in the center of talk and attention.

Following this promise and after a series of consultations, Buhari traveled to Sochi, Russia in October 2019 to begin the process that led to the current state of the plant. He noted, after the Sochi meeting of the two presidents that followed the Russia-Africa summit that "the definitive highlight was the Russians' decision to accept a government-to-government deal that would see them return to completing the rolling mill of Ajaokuta steel and put it into service. Despite this exit and these promises, there was still 18 months of status quo after meeting with Putin, the Russian president on a bilateral agreement. Buhari's first four-year term , between 2015 and 2019, did less to update the above.

Inspired by these administrative bottlenecks and the need to deliver on the Buhari administration's promise on Ajaokuta, the House of Representatives pledged in February 2018 to join the battle to raise the 500 million dollars needed to complete the last phase of the Ajaokuta Steel project. This assurance was given under the then President, Yakubu Dogara. He said "unless the political will is lacking, obtaining the funds to complete the enterprise should not be a problem, given the importance of the enterprise for the development of the country"

What was the position of lawmakers after this statement? Is there a political will to achieve this on the part of the executive? These questions are still unanswered.

Prompted by a series of reminders by concerned citizens and stakeholders to keep this promise made in 2015, Buhari's government inaugurated the Ajaokuta Presidential Project Implementation Team, APPIT in May 2010 with the secretary of the government of the Federation, Mr. Boss Mustapha as president. The highlight of the inauguration was the echo of Buhari's visit to Russia based on a government-to-government agreement with funding from Afreximbank and the Russian Export Center. The Mustapha Committee (Team) again raised the hopes of Nigerians, noting that the company is now under the tutelage of the President.

The Boss Mustapha Committee further informed the public that one of the main issues addressed by the party i.e. Russia and Nigeria was technical audit, upgrading, completion and operation of the Ajaokuta Steel Company. The inauguration of the APPIT, he said, was therefore aimed at restarting the process of reorienting the activities of the steel mill with the aim of reviving the steel project for the growth and economic development of our dear nation" .these assurances leave much to doubt.

From the year 2019, when the APPIT was inaugurated until around October 2020, it is common knowledge that no serious activity on the pledges took place; nor did the Committee meet more than once. In another related press briefing, the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Arc. Olamilekan Adegbite said the delay in accelerating ASCL to four major factors which he categorized as force majeure and include Boko Haram insurgency, COVID 19 phenomenon, October 2022 nationwide floods and the legal case before the International Court of Arbitration

True to their type, the apology does not justify postponing the resuscitation of the plant, until September 2022, when the government finally settled the legal debt to the tune of $496 million against 5, 3 billion dollars claimed by the Indian company Global Steel Holding. This action has drawn praise and congratulations to the government in the hope that Nigeria's debt settlement has now cleared the factory of all legal encumbrances. It was therefore hoped that the way was now clear for a full commitment to the revival of Ajaokuta.

In this sense, what remains to be done, however, is the political will, and possibly that the technical audits of the plant can now begin with the availability of funds. Giving, that the Minister Arc. Adegbite had earlier assured the country that after the force majeure, the technical audit would be done as the money had been released earlier, and Nigerians hoped that Ajaokuta's promises would now come true.

As reported in the Economic Confidential of July 16, 2019, an audit of the factory conducted by Ukrainian and Nigerian engineers, technicians...