₦airaland Forum

Zoomlion Was Debarred by World Bank for Bribery. It’s Lagos’ New Business Partner

Zoomlion, the company whose partnership the Lagos State Government wants to use to solve its waste management problem, was once debarred by the World Bank for bribing its way into securing a public contract, FIJ has found.

FIJ also found that in other African countries, where Zoomlion built its waste management business over the last two decades, the company has spent years defending itself against audit findings and litigation.

Lagos State Government recently entered into a partnership with Ghanaian waste management giant Zoomlion Ghana Limited to redevelop the Olusosun landfill, one of Africa’s largest dumpsites. Babatunde Sanwo-Olu, the state governor, signed the concessionaire with the company in May.

The state government says the partnership will modernise waste management and convert waste into economic value.

FIJ reviewed World Bank records, reports by Ghana’s Auditor General, government statements and official responses issued by the company.

WORLD BANK DEBARRED ZOOMLION OVER LIBERIA BRIBERY CASE
One of the more controversial episodes in Zoomlion’s corporate history occurred in September 2013, when the World Bank debarred the company for two years.

According to the World Bank, the sanction followed a Negotiated Resolution Agreement reached after investigations into the Emergency Monrovia Urban Sanitation Project, a World Bank-funded project in Liberia.

GHANA’S AUDITOR GENERAL REPEATEDLY QUESTIONED SANITATION CONTRACTS
Beyond the debarment, Zoomlion has been getting the regulatory stick in Ghana through successive Auditor General reports looking into sanitation contracts funded by public money.

FIJ found a detailed audit report by the Ghanaian Government from 2019 — titled ‘REPORT OF THE AUDITOR-GENERAL ON THE MANAGEMENT AND UTILISATION OF DISTRICT ASSEMBLIES’ COMMON FUND AND OTHER STATUTORY FUNDS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2019’ — which mentioned Zoomlion 151 times.

The auditors found contractual lapses that fell into two categories. The first involved instances where auditors said the company failed to supply equipment required under contracts despite continuing to receive payments. The second involved payments auditors questioned because they were made without valid contracts or for work that was not performed.

One of the clearer examples of contractual inconsistency in the report came in the Auditor General’s 2019 report on the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF).

At the Komenda Edina Eguafo Abrem Municipal Assembly (KEEA) in Ghana’s Central Region, auditors examined Zoomlion’s Sanitation Improvement Package contract and concluded that the company had not fully complied with its contractual obligations despite deductions continuing from the Assembly’s DACF allocation.

The firm's managing partner is Karl-Marx Edward Ikemefuna William George Okeke-Von Batten (commonly known as Karl Von Batten or simply Von Batten). He is a Nigerian-born lobbyist who has adopted a Germanic-sounding professional alias. His full legal name reflects his Nigerian heritage (Ikemefuna William George Okeke), while "Von Batten" serves as his professional identity in Washington lobbying circles.

According to his LegiStorm profile, Von Batten has military history with the U.S. Army, having provided operational support during Operation Noble Eagle and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has been listed as a lobbyist for the firm continuously from 2020 through 2026.

In March-April 2026, the firm filed FARA disclosures for a 1.2 million, 12-month contract with former Nigerian Vice-President Atiku Abubakar (associated with the African Democratic Congress/ADC). The contract objectives include:

- Counterbalancing Nigerian government lobbying narratives in the U.S.
- Advancing understanding of Atiku's "leadership posture and policy vision"
- Facilitating meetings with U.S. government officials and Congress members
- Lobbying on democratic governance, regional stability, and U.S.-Nigeria engagement

The firm publicly announced it would brief U.S. Congress and the Trump administration on INEC's suspension of ADC leadership recognition, framing it as affecting opposition participation ahead of Nigeria's 2027 elections.

Kemetian:
According to AI

"The reported 20-year gas supply agreement is important because it addresses one of the critical conditions for operating an energy-intensive steel complex. If it is followed by investment, rehabilitation, commissioning, and sustained production, it could help unlock manufacturing, infrastructure, and employment opportunities"

- AI


TINUBU IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK.

PLEASE IGNORE THESE HATERS OF NIGERIA.

Gas matters, but a blast furnace does not run on natural gas — it runs on metallurgical coke made in the coke oven batteries. Independent technical assessments describe the coke ovens as needing full overhaul with *no coal supply secured*, the blast furnace refractory lining as degraded after 30+ years idle, blowers and stoves needing replacement, PLC controls obsolete, and rolling-mill motors and gearboxes cannibalized between 2008 and 2015. A gas MoU touches none of those. So the claim that this removes "one of the biggest obstacles" is defensible only in a narrow sense; the claim that production is now imminent is not.

Successlane:
Can somebody enlighten us more on this gas supply to Ajaokuta?

To where exactly in the plant?

To produce what?

I'm asking a genuine question, please.

I was at Ajaokuta for over 5 years as an electrical engineer, [b]and I still can't relate the relevance of gas supply to the plant.

[/b]

Zionmdde:
I have never seen people with a more useless propaganda

Ajaokuta never lacked gas supply from day 1. They have a dedicated gas supply source. So what exactly did they sign again

Evil things

## Objective appraisal

The article is essentially a press-release-style announcement dressed as reporting. The core factual event it describes — a 20-year gas supply agreement/MoU between Ajaokuta Steel Company and NNPCL — is plausible and, if real, genuinely useful. But the framing around it ("breaks 46-year jinx," "on the threshold of production" is where an expert reading has to push back hard. Gas supply was never the binding constraint at Ajaokuta, and the article confuses solving one input problem with solving the problem.

**What holds up.** [/b]The historical scaffolding is broadly accurate. Construction began in 1979, the complex reached roughly 84–98% structural completion in the mid-1980s, and it has never produced a single sheet of liquid steel commercially. It has drained more than $8 billion over four decades, including a ~$496 million arbitration settlement in 2022 to regain control from Global Steel Holdings. Nigeria does import most of its steel and consumes far more than it makes. That context is real and the article gets it directionally right.

[b]**Where it misleads — the central problem.** An integrated blast-furnace/basic-oxygen-furnace plant like Ajaokuta needs, at minimum, four things running in concert: a functional blast furnace, coke ovens with a coal/coke supply, processed iron ore delivered reliably (the Itakpe mine plus the Itakpe–Ajaokuta rail link), and energy. Gas matters, but a blast furnace does not run on natural gas — it runs on metallurgical coke made in the coke oven batteries. Independent technical assessments describe the coke ovens as needing full overhaul with *no coal supply secured*, the blast furnace refractory lining as degraded after 30+ years idle, blowers and stoves needing replacement, PLC controls obsolete, and rolling-mill motors and gearboxes cannibalized between 2008 and 2015. A gas MoU touches none of those. So the claim that this removes "one of the biggest obstacles" is defensible only in a narrow sense; the claim that production is now imminent is not.

[b]**Unsupported leaps.**[/b]The piece asserts a "46-year deadlock" is broken and that the plant is "on the threshold of production." Nothing in the reported event supports that. An MoU is a statement of intent, not a binding, financed, executed contract — and Ajaokuta's history is a graveyard of MoUs, audits, and "98% complete" pronouncements dating back through the Obasanjo, Yar'Adua, and Buhari administrations. The jobs figures ("thousands of direct and indirect jobs", the "catalyst for national economic transformation" language, and "investor confidence is expected to increase significantly" are all attributed to unnamed "analysts," "observers," and "many Nigerians."There is not a single named source beyond the plant's own MD, no NNPCL executive quoted, no contract value, no gas volume or pricing, and no delivery-infrastructure detail (a pipeline connection to the site is itself non-trivial).

**The counter-view the article omits entirely.** There is a serious, credible school of thought — including Aliko Dangote, who runs Africa's largest industrial operations — that the Soviet-era BF/BOF design is economically obsolete and that reviving it may cost as much as building a new modern plant, while still producing steel that can't compete with Asian imports or electric-arc mini-mills. Reasonable people disagree, but a balanced piece would at least acknowledge that the "revive Ajaokuta" project has informed skeptics. This article presents only triumphalism.

**Bottom line.** Treat the gas deal as a real and modestly positive development if the MoU is genuine — reliable energy is a precondition for any eventual operation. But the headline is public-relations framing, not an engineering or commercial reality. Gas supply was not the reason Ajaokuta never produced steel, and signing a supply MoU does not put the plant "on the threshold of production." The credibility test isn't a gas agreement; it's a fully financed, executed revitalization contract plus a working coke/coal supply, a rehabilitated furnace and coke batteries, and a functioning Itakpe ore-and-rail chain. Until those move, this belongs in the long lineage of Ajaokuta announcements that outran the metallurgy.

AMINDA:
He broke the jinx by signing an MOU? This propaganda merchants sef!

FSBoperator:
Palestinian Arab is cover for Mossad.

Palestinians are majority Shiite and same Shittes in Lebanon under Hezbollah fought ISIS and chased them away.

Any Sunni terrorist organization is linked to Israel, Saudi Arabia, UK and the Great Satan , Amerikkka.

Kobojunkie:
You must be very brilliant to reason that Kemi is in power only because she was voted for by about 3.7% to 4.0% of black folks in the U.K., the vast majority of whom notoriously vote Labor? Unbeweavable! 😒😒

Votes no be power again? Aaarrggh!! This DEI sheet needs to end, and mental health asylums need to be brought back, abeg! 😒😒😒

Kobojunkie:
This is rich coming from the same folks convinced they are right in bastardizing UK heritage.

2. WOW! You actually managed to convince yourself that the less than 1 million Nigerians in the UK is a reason why Kemi is in power? Unbelievable! "Awon racists ni gbogbon yin for sure!"... where do I find that old video of the Yoruba Nigerian in London accusing everyone else of being racists when she herself was being blatantly racist and rude to everyone on that bus! 😂😂😂😂

Baxilexi:
Nigerians, many of which are insatiable, disingenuous and retrogressive.

They vilify Kemi alongside her political opponents because she has no plans to open up the doors of the state to them.
They hate her because she stands for what every sane individual who has been given the opportunity to serve in a country that works should portray.
They hate her because she has tethered herself to the preservation of British values and existence.

Need I remind you that Trump has the same stats as Kemi but does not favor the Germans or Scott’s neither does he give migrants a free pass.

It is a treasonable offense to hold citizenship of a country and owe it no allegiance, while also having the audacity to point fingers at someone who respects the terms of her citizenship.

If the tables were turned and a foreigner stood at the frontlines with well meaning Nigerians to support our development even against his ethnic background would we call him a traitor?

Hypocrites! The UK isn’t a concentration camp or a motel. It’s a country. Do not only think of how much money you can take away and repatriate to a village, but what you can add to ensure it remains open to well meaning migrants that share similar views on it’s advancement.

You cannot serve two master!

Kobojunkie:
1. Yes, the numerous brain-dead inventions of the DEI movement are something I should pay particular attention to. Nonsense! 😒😒😒

2. Uninformed because I agree with Kemi that Britain and its legacy have been poo-pooed on by the psychotic delusion that is DEI? 😒

Kobojunkie:
What struggles? Have you ever risked even your life for the nation that you are so desperate to claim you have legit struggles in?

2. Deluded Nigerian? 😂😂😂😂

This is coming from a Nigerian who has never lifted a single finger to fight for the very same things in his home country, Nigeria! 😂😂😂

Kobojunkie:
Google is a friend, not an enemy!

Selecting people based on aristos is NOTHING LIKE DEI.

2. I mentioned returning to the days of the death penalty for treason for good reason.

3. I didn't say it was the best system. Rather, I explained what it is compared to your claim of it being some sort of DEI nonsense.
Also, imbeciles such as the ones you described could have been easily taken care of in the past by way of a beheading in the old system, which did not really spare even the nobles.

Kobojunkie:
Google is a friend, not an enemy!

Selecting people based on aristos is NOTHING LIKE DEI.

2. I mentioned returning to the days of the death penalty for treason for good reason.

3. I didn't say it was the best system. Rather, I explained what it is compared to your claim of it being some sort of DEI nonsense.
Also, imbeciles such as the ones you described could have been easily taken care of in the past by way of a beheading in the old system, which did not really spare even the nobles.

Kobojunkie:
Nonsense article! Kemi Badenoch's approach is common sense! DEI is a failed experiment. Successful empires were built and sustained by mostly meritocratic means. Britain has fallen from to levels near that of a third-world country because of the stewpid DEI experiment it has blindly committed itself to.

Amotolongbo:
So you think that kidnapping activity of such magnitude, school to attack, place to keep the victims, intelligence gathering and logistics can be planned and executed within 24 hours?

Since Peter Obi has said Seyi Makinde told him that the president hasn’t called him on the school kidnapping in his state, then I knew it’s a matter of time Makinde will start thinking and talking like Peter Obi. Just want to make himself a victim of everything for sympathy.

Please don’t use such a reasoning faculty to hustle for daily 2k o 😆

ManirBK:
We've the richest people in Africa, so it's normal

Newsgeek24:
https://verynigerian.com/gbajabiamila-knew-about-appointment-the-court-will-vindicate-presidencys-fake-agency-suspect-insists/

dre11:
https://dailypost.ng/2026/06/26/nigerian-govt-should-make-senate-part-time-work-ndume/

Kemi Badenoch rose to lead the Conservative Party on a ladder built, in part, by the very Black political struggle she now seems determined to dismantle.

She can thank me later.

That is not ego. That is history. Long before Britain discovered the fashionable language of “diversity”, generations of Black campaigners, organisers, lawyers, parents, workers, community leaders and political activists fought to force open doors that were never willingly opened.

Operation Black Vote was part of that struggle. So were countless others. We pushed institutions, parties and public life to take Black representation seriously, not as a favour, but as a democratic necessity.

Which is why Badenoch’s latest attack on diversity, equality and anti-racism is not simply a disagreement over policy. It is part of a wider ideological project to dismantle the post-Macpherson settlement, bury the language of institutional racism, and return Britain to the comforting fiction that racism is only ever individual, accidental and safely in the past.

Let us tell the truth plainly. Badenoch did not rise in a vacuum. She rose through a political and public culture shaped by generations of Black struggle, equality legislation, anti-racist organising and the long moral labour of communities who fought to make representation possible in British public life.

Now she stands at the top of the ladder, reaching down to pull it up behind her.

This Substack article is my response to that betrayal. It argues that diversity without justice is decoration, representation without accountability is theatre, and Black faces in high places mean little if they are used to legitimise the rollback of Black rights.

We have been here before.

The empire always found intermediaries. Power has always preferred a familiar face to deliver an old message.

Badenoch is diversity’s most ungrateful dividend.

orisa37:
KB IS AGNOSTIC BUT SHE IS RIGHTEOUS.
HER RELIGION IS THEREFORE RIGHTEOUSNESS

orisa37:
"KEMI BADENOCH IS THE DEI CANDIDATE WHO WANTS TO ABOLISH THE LIFT.
SHE IS THE EQUALITY-ERA BENEFICIARY NOW CAMPAIGNING AGAINST EQUALITY-ERA.
SHE IS THE LADDER CLIMBER TURNED LADDER INSPECTOR DECLARING THE STRUCTURE UNSAFE ONCE SHE HAS REACHED THE BALCONY.
AND IFSHE INSISTS ON POURING SCORN ON THE STRUGGLE THAT HELPED MAKE HER ASCENT POSSIBLE, THEN SOME OF US ARE ENTITLED TO POINT OUT THE PUDDLE ".

YES.
KB IS AT THE BALCONY PRAYING TO BE SECURED, SAFE AND SUCCESSFUL.
KEMI IS RIGHTEOUS.
AND I KNOW SHE IS PRAYING NOW FOR WISDOM, POWER AND MIGHT FOR THOSE COMING BEHIND HER TO REACH THE BALCONY LIKE HER.
GOD BLESS KEMI. IJN AMEN.

Kemetian:
If you know how I hate this girl eh?

She's the very personification of a demon in human form.

Kemi Badenoch: Diversity’s Most Ungrateful Dividend

The Tory leader who benefited from decades of equality struggle now wants to liquidate the moral estate.

And so, another day in modern Britain, another sighting of Kemi Badenoch galloping across the public square, cultural-war sword in hand, seeking to slay the imaginary dragons of equality, justice and historical accuracy.

When she is not sallying forth against political correctness in the police, she is apparently attempting to rescue British history from the terrible menace of students being told what actually happened. One half expects her next speech to announce a new national curriculum in which empire was mostly about tea, railways and unfortunate paperwork.


Her latest attacks are not isolated remarks. They form part of a sustained campaign against the very instruments that helped make her own rise possible. She has attacked the Macpherson settlement. She wants to scrap the Public Sector Equality Duty. She defends more stop and search, even when the bodies being searched are disproportionately Black. She rails against equality networks, anti-racism, public accountability and the modest idea that institutions should occasionally check whether they are discriminating before declaring themselves innocent.

This is not common sense. This is a counter-revolution against equality wearing sensible flat shoes and pretending to be the voice of God know who. Kemi having led her party to he worst defeat in modern political history, has no humility, no quiet period of reflection.

Kemi seamless transitions from failure to fuckery, no hmmm what could we done better or where did we go wrong. Fourteen years of Tory rule, that messed up the nation. and Kemi has about as much good grace as Donald Trump/ Its as though the last 14 years didnt happen.

And here is the irony so large it should have its own blue plaque: Despite her Thatcherite exertions Kemi Badenoch may be the ultimate DEI success story of British conservative politics.
I say that with a soupçon of mischief, but not without truth. Bear with while I creak it down.

No, I did not write her politics CV. I did not fill in her application forms.

I did not sit her exams, draft her speeches, knock on doors in her constituency or whisper motivational quotes into her ear while she climbed the greasy pole of Tory ambition.

She did that work herself, and let us not pretend otherwise.

But I damn sure helped create a Britain in which her CV and job application would be read.

That is the point.

Badenoch’s emergence as leader of a centre-right party in Britain did not happen in a vacuum. It was made possible by decades of struggle by women’s movements, Black civil rights campaigners, disabled activists, LGBT communities, trade unionists and democratic reformers who forced Britain’s political parties to confront their own exclusionary habits..

Operation Black Vote, which I helped found, was part of that pressure. We challenged all major parties in the noughts, including the Conservatives, to stop behaving as though modern democracy could be run like a private dining club for white men called Tarquin, Rupert and Sir Something-of-the-Shires, all mistaking inherited confidence for constitutional wisdom.

Formers PM David Cameron’s much trumpeted A-list did not fall from the sky like a diversity-themed episode of The Crown. It came from a changed political climate. That climate was created by agitation, organising, moral pressure and the embarrassing fact that Britain’s political class looked less like Britain than a county golf club committee trapped in 1957

That pressure opened doors.

Badenoch walked through one of them.

Now having climbed up the ladder of opportunity literally built on the back of those who went before her - she now seeks pull up that same ladder for everyone else. Its s stunning and frankly sickening hypocrisy - its almost students politics as opposed to stateswoman like deportment.

This is the historical amnesia of the Black right-wing bourgeoisie. It reinvents itself as the pure product of meritocracy, as though Britain were some neutral tournament of talent where everyone begins at the same starting line, wearing the same shoes, facing the same weather, and judged by the same referee.

Please.

Britain is not a meritocracy. It is often closer to a pigmentocracy: a society where shade, class, accent, proximity to whiteness and usefulness to power still shape whose brilliance is recognised and whose is left outside holding the minutes.

That does not mean Badenoch has no talent. Clearly she has. The problem is not that she rose. The problem is that having risen through a political landscape reshaped by equality struggles, she now sells a fantasy that those struggles were unnecessary, excessive or dangerous.

She is not proof that equality went too far.

She is proof that equality went far enough to make her possible, but not far enough to make her accountable.

There is a particular kind of politics that delights in being the exception while condemning the rule. It says: “I made it, therefore the system works.” It takes one individual journey and turns it into a national alibi. It looks at the locked doors still facing millions and says, “Well, I found a key.”

That is not courage. That is concierge conservatism: opening the door for yourself, then telling everyone else the building has no access problem.

Badenoch’s recent assault on Macpherson is especially revealing. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry did not invent institutional racism. It named what Black communities already knew. It gave public language to private grief, community anger and decades of official denial. It told Britain that racism is not merely a matter of rude individuals saying ugly things in dark corners. Racism can live in policies, procedures, cultures, silences, habits and institutional reflexes.

That is what Badenoch appears determined to reverse. Not by proving institutional racism has disappeared, but by attacking the language that allows us to see it.

This is the conjuring trick. Make the word disappear, and perhaps the wound will follow. Scrap the duty, and maybe the discrimination will get bored and leave. Stop measuring disproportionality, and perhaps disproportionality will politely cease to exist, like a vampire denied planning permission.

But Black communities know better. We know the old game. When they say “colour-blind”, they usually mean blind to racism, not blind to race. When they say “common sense”, they often mean the common sense of those who have never had to survive the system they are defending.

Badenoch now presents herself as the fearless slayer of woke dragons. But the dragons she attacks are often just basic protections wearing the wrong hat. Equality law. Public accountability. Anti-racist scrutiny. Historical honesty. Institutional memory. The right of citizens to ask whether the state treats them fairly.

If those are dragons, then saddle me up. I am with the dragons.

The tragedy of Badenoch is not that she is conservative. Black people are not required to think alike, vote alike or march to one drumbeat. The tragedy is that she has chosen to become the smiling executioner of the very equality infrastructure that made her leadership imaginable.

She did not write herself into history alone.

Movements wrote the margins wider.

Campaigners kicked the doorframe loose.

Communities challenged the bouncers.

And now, having entered the room, Badenoch seems determined to give a TED Talk on why doors were never the issue.

That is why her politics deserves ridicule as well as rebuttal. Because beneath the steel, the slogans and the “common sense” costume, there is a farce at work.

Kemi Badenoch is the DEI candidate who wants to abolish the lift.

She is the equality-era beneficiary now campaigning against the equality era.

She is the ladder-climber turned ladder inspector, declaring the whole structure unsafe once she has reached the balcony.

And if she insists on pouring scorn on the struggles that helped make her ascent possible, then some of us are entitled to point out the puddle.

SecurityNgr:
WATCH THE VIDEO CLIP ABOVE

Gbogboski:
For the records, most of the prisoners are held for visa overstay. They were our young men that japad to the wrong destination.

We have an epidemic of young Nigerians that wants to leave the country by fire by force, while at it, they should do a proper research of their japa destinations. There are a lot of shit hole countries out there.

Oct 3, 2023.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has revealed that over 270 Nigerian inmates are serving various prison terms in Ethiopia, adding most were imprisoned for drug-related offences.

The ministry said this in reaction to a viral video by one Dr Paul Ezike, making the rounds on social media on the alleged plight of Nigerian inmates in the Kaliti Prison in Ethiopia.

AustineE1:
At least with Bianca as foriegn affairs minister I can assure you that all Nigerians will be properly taken care of in any country you find yourself. Not like Abike dabiri(director of Nigerian diasporian committee)whom herself allegedly is so deep into petty tribalism while supported by her tribal mobs,who only see people by their ethnic group and not by the strength of their character.
Peter Obi is an example of what a modern patriotic politician should be.

Amovingman:
Keep playing they'll soon deregister ndc which Peter obi might not contest for next year election