misleading report.... It is still a promise. Na their style

somehow:
Are you a born liar or you are just learning how to lie?
Our refineries work but not optimally (praying you know the meaning)

Well, I depend on the media, I heard we still import fuel and marketers are negotiating subsidy. If this is a lie, then we are all lies starting from the top.

You import the difference between what the NNPC produce and what is being demanded.

Gerrit?

and stop depending on the media for everything, filter, compare and lastly use common sense to arrive at what to believe or not.

showafrica:


Well, I depend on the media, I heard we still import fuel and marketers are negotiating subsidy. If this is a lie, then we are all lies starting from the top.

yemmight:
Me I know Buhari really mean well for the nation if not for the likes of Saraki and co.

That's why i get worried about this Sowore, if he wins how did he want to preside well with the type of Legislators we have in Nigeria.

OMEGA009:
No Nigerian can visit Ajaokuta Steel Company ASC, see investments of more than $8b rotting in the African sun and not cry. i went there, I cried. what exactly is the problem? if I have written severally on this topic, but today let me do a comprehensive post.

Ajaokuta Steel Company is massive, she has 68km road network, 24 housing estates on the project. Some of the estates 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.

There is no industrialized nation on earth that does not have a steel sector it’s that simple. A report by the Central Bank of Nigeria shows that Nigeria currently imports steel, aluminum products and associated derivatives of approximately 25 metric tonnes per annum estimated at $4.5bn, this figure will continue to rise, and the Nigerian economy continues to expand. Ajaokuta is an integrated steel company, it was designed by the Russian to be self-sufficient to get all its inputs from Nigeria and make steel. Ajaokuta strength is also its weakness, Ajaokuta can only work with all inputs available.



this will be a slightly technical post, but please try and follow.



Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon amongst other things, iron is the base metal in steel, to make steel, you need Iron Ore, Coke from Coal, Limestone as main components. these components are mixed in a blast furnace to produce liquid steel which can be long steel for rail lines or flat steel for automobile making etc

To give a simple example, look at steel as making jollof rice, iron ore is the rice, the limestone and coke are the pepper and salt the pot is the blast furnace. At a steel plane the blast furnace is ONLY turned on when the steel company is ready to make steel. Blast furnaces operate continuously and are never shut down. The raw material to be fed into the furnace is divided into several small charges that are introduced into the furnace at 10- to 15-min intervals. this means everything must be in place BEFORE the blast furnace is turned on, the iron ore, the coal, the limestone, everything, why? Because you do not switch off a blast furnace for another 10 years or however its campaign life is.



Nigeria has blessed with all the major raw materials needed to produce steel including iron ore in Kogi, coal and limestone in Enugu.

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 a high phosphate content. Phosphate can cause brittleness in steel making it to fracture, thus Agbaga 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.

Coal? Most of the coal found in Nigeria is non-coking, thus, unsuitable for steel production. coal deposits in Enugu, have no impurities but are non-coking. The good news? Nigeria has abundant deposit of limestone and we have natural gas to provide power



So back to Ajaokuta, what really happened? why can Nigeria not make steel anytime soon? let’s link up the elements

Policy Failure: The Ajaokuta contract was signed between the Nigerian government and the Soviet state-owned company, Tiajpromexport (TPE) the company was scheduled for completion in 1986. In 2012, the Federal Government launched her backward integration policy. Going forward import licenses for steel products was only granted to companies producing steel locally. TPE to ensure they could import steel parts for Ajaokuta simply went ahead and built the rolling mills in Ajaokuta before the actual steel plant was completed, they imported billet from Ukraine to accomplish this. Thus, Ajaokuta was producing steel before the actual steel plant was started. Thus, amazingly Ajaokuta has a functional rolling mills but no operational blast furnace, Ajaokuta cannot produce steel from basic iron ore found in Nigeria in her blast furnace.…this is the definition of cart before the horse.


NIOMCO Factor: The iron ore in Nigeria earmarked for Ajaokuta is from Itakpe, it has low iron content thus the FG built 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. Simply put, if NIOMCO does not operate, Ajaokuta CANNOT operate (unless Ajaokuta uses imported iron ore.) as at today, June 17th 2018, NIOMCO is not operational




Railway: 15m tonnes of iron ore cannot be moved by road, as it will destroy the roads, thus a railway was to be built from Itakpe to Ajaokuta to take iron ore from the beneficiation plan in Itakpe to the Ajaokuta. The. Itakpe to Ajaokuta by rail is just 52km, the rail line was to be delivered by March 2019, but the Minister of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi revised the delivery date to June 2018 and converted the purely commercial railway to also carry human passengers. These changes meant the cost of the project and delivery dates had to change as passenger wagons and train stations had to be built. To achieve this, 12 new passenger stations and 12 access roads had to be designed and built. The Itakpe to Ajaokuta (IA) has two stations. As at June 2018, The station IA1 – Eganyi to Itakpe, is still under design. Station AW1 – Ajaokuta (standard station) (zero per cent work done). Thus the railways are not functional


Blast Furnace: The furnace in Ajaokuta is the heart of Ajaokuta, it is the pot where the jollof rice will be cooked, however it has never been turned on, why? because there has never been any time Ajaokuta has had raw materials available to ensure continuous day in day out production for 5 years. Why has there never been materials? Because there is no rail way to take iron ore from Itakpe to Ajaokuta. Why is there no railway from Itakpe to Ajaokuta? Because NIOMCO in Itakpe is moribund and no functional and cannot convert Nigeria iron ore to high grade ore for the furnace in Ajaokuta.


So, it follows that for Ajaokuta to work, we MUST have three key critical paths



NIOMCO must be functional
Itakpe to Ajaokuta Railway line must be functional
Blast Furnace operational
All three are not functional, so its clear Nigeria cannot make steel in Ajaokuta. Nothing however stops a corrupt government official from importing billets and running them in the rolling mills to deceive tax payers. So, when anyone tells you Ajaokuta will soon work ask them, can a steel plant work without NIOMCO, railways and a blast furnace?



All is not gloom, Kayode Fayemi as Minister was able to secure an out of court about Ajaokuta, we must build on this



In closing, Ajaokuta is the only steel plant in the world built by the USSR, sold to Americans, then to Indians, all these teams have come and gone with their own technical style, there have even been accusations of asset stripping by the Indians.



So why this post? because I am a patriot, I will not sit by and watch scarce resources be wasted in a grand deceit. Probably some corrupt folks have told Mr President that Ajaokuta can produce economically viable steel if “small” dollars are spent. You can already see how the critical rail line delivery dates was moved back to ensure it is done in time for 2019 elections, yet it is still in design stage. Ajaokuta is Nigeria and probably Africa biggest failure. It has failed. Can it be made to work yes but the cost to integrate Ajaokuta with her mines and rails can be used to build new smaller modern turn key functional steel mills. The government should get out of Ajaokuta, sell the place and allows the private sector capital and expertise restructure and own it.



If you want to make jollof rice and there is no rice the solution is not to keep boiling water without rice but to go and get rice.

Quite informative

if only we can shine our eyes that buhari meant well for Nigeria

somehow:
You import the difference between what the NNPC produce and what is being demanded.

Gerrit?

and stop depending on the media for everything, filter, compare and lastly use common sense to arrive at what to believe or not.

My argument is that I don't see any difference between now and the last 10years. If you are a mediocre, I am not. You tell me not to cut trees because I use knife and you went ahead to cut the trees with tractors, what difference did you make to preserve the trees??

showafrica:


My argument is that I don't see any difference between now and the last 10years. If you are a mediocre, I am not. You tell me not to cut trees because I use knife and you went ahead to cut the trees with tractors, what difference did you make to preserve the trees??

Because you chose what to see and become blind to what you don't want to see.

Enjoy

Jiang:


So what you want us to do, let it continue to rot so you can import steel for us from China abi, Why can't you people be patriotic for once. let me tell you, even if it's 10% more costly I go buy from my own country instead of foreign made scrap.

Go screw ur self Mr "obsolete technology" metchew, you just spoil ma mode

There's nothing patriotic about economic nonsense. It takes courage to take the right step. Sometimes the right step could be to tear down and rebuild. There exists cheaper and more efficient and effective steel technology today. Would you send your child to school to learn the technology that is needed to support Ajaokuta? This is akin to sticking with a bad idea because you have invested so much in it.

Good news.

But this bunch of desperados can lie like the devil. Which Ajaokuta is working? Is it the one in their dreams?

I thought as much fail goverment

resurgent2019:


It’s pure propaganda. Above is a detailed report of the Ajaokuta conundrum, and what it will take to fix Nigeria’s steel deficit.

We have not even scratched the surface yet. A solution to the problem will outlive Buhari’s administration.

This is a hatchet job done by the Federal Ministry of Information in collaboration with Al-Jazeera network.