The Ajaokuta Steel Company, located in Ajaokuta, Kogi State, which is about 38 km from Lokoja, the State Capital, is a multi-billion dollar steel company which is supposed to be the bedrock of Nigeria’s industrialization.
But what is a steel company without steeliness, resilience, without the kind of resilience that eventually wears out challenges even if they are like iron?
As a company and a metaphor for failure, the Ajaokuta Steel Company continues to defy Nigeria, defining with stark clarity the reason Nigeria has found it so difficult to properly kick off its industrialization.
For every administration that comes into power, evoking the Ajaokota Steel Company is a ritual and a rhetoric. Every year, the government talks about reviving it to give Nigeria a spine for what it needs most: industrialization. Yet, nothing always happens.
The latest to evoke Ajaokuta is Mr. Khalil Halilu, who is the Executive Vice Chairman of the National Agency for Science Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI). According to him, reviving Ajaokuta is central to the government’s industrialization agenda and is top priority.
In many ways, Ajaokuta is a metaphor for Nigeria, a paradox, a symbol of the many projects the country has embarked upon, but has always abandoned midway, with each forced stop showing a lack of sustainability, and throwing a spanner in the country’s works.
These projects apart from always resulting in the colossal waste of human and material resources often serve as drainpipes for public funds, and sumptuous opportunities to feather private nests.
A major reason Nigeria’s provision of adequate infrastructure for its citizens either stalls completely through the years, or completely or been scandalously slow through the years is the general climate of confusion among those who make key decisions. Key questions like what projects to embark on, how to fund them, and whether they are sustainable eventually don’t usually receive the brainstorming they deserve resulting in poor decisions.
There is also the problem of corruption which typically sees funds for projects embezzled or diverted, resulting in no work done, or shoddy jobs at best.
A source of constant irritation and frustration for Nigerians in this that Nigeria is not without models, exemplary countries that are exemplars it can look up to.
As a country, Nigeria has had its fair share of challenges, but it is not alone in this. Examples abound of countries who overcame formidable teething concerns to make a sparkling ascent to the top of international development.
Countries like Singapore and Malaysia have shown what single-minded, visionary leadership can do. It is gravely concerning that Nigeria, typically so eager to copy nebulous ideas from other countries, is reluctant to imitate some of the countries who are pushing in the right direction despite backbreaking challenges.
While the Ajaokuta Steel Company lies moribund, calamitously dragging the country down the precipitous path of underdevelopment and stagnation, many young people who would be gainfully employed in the company churning out gains are drowning in the sea of unemployment where the sharks of different crimes, including terrorism, are eager to swallow them whole.
Nigeria has not seen requisite return on its investment in the Ajaokuta Steel Company. Many Nigerians have been born, lived, and died without enjoying any benefits from what is supposed to be a source of pride for Nigerians. This is simply unacceptable.
The grinding poverty that continues to suffocate Nigerians cannot give way without industrialization. Steel is central to industrialization efforts. A country which speaks about industrialization and development while it allows its premier steel company to lie in ruins is one conjuring up national deceit and dissatisfaction.
Ike Willie-Nwobu,
