₦airaland Forum

LagosOrigin:
Deal that only exists on the pages of newspaper

Nonsense

20yrs after tinubu mis-rule is over, we will be talking about this Ajaokuta steel

Usual wailing

They want to pump money into the company and loot it back.
That a non-functional company even has a managing director and several staff on its payroll is absolutely concerning.

Election is coming. See as his gullible supporters would mob this thread

Just MoU? Na ordinary MoU we wan chop? Show us real work.

Emilokan


Abeg how does it help the common man

LagosOrigin:
Deal that only exists on the pages of newspaper

Nonsense

20yrs after tinubu mis-rule is over, we will be talking about this Ajaokuta steel

They want waste money just as they did with PH refinery, at the end of it all, it will still go back to its former comatose position.

Pootle:
as much as i dont like obi calling his name in this makes no sense

You don't get it. Obi is their nightmare . Their believe is, anyone who's opposed to their master's propaganda is either a supporter of Obi or an Obidient. Someone still called me Chinedu yesterday . That's how they reason

A moribund company signing an MOU with another one ... Could not revive refinery na steel dem wan revive

TimeMachine2:
You will still ne on nairaland.com till 2045 and obi will never be president.

How many times today so far? Cos we know you have to mention Obi's name 10 time daily for you blokos to function in za oza room.

I don't think the major cause why this ajakuta steel plant hasn't fully commenced full operations it's due to lack of gas supply if it's all about gas the Indian company that bought it years ago and failed to operate it wouldn't have had any issues. Most of the equipments have become obsolete and outdated and needs refurbishment.

LagosOrigin:
Deal that only exists on the pages of newspaper

Nonsense

20yrs after tinubu mis-rule is over, we will be talking about this Ajaokuta steel

May you cease to be allergic to good news.

abc115:
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2026/07/tinubu-breaks-46-year-ajaokuta-steel-jinx-as-nnpcl-signs-20-year-gas-supply-deal/

Did I hear you say "break the jinx"? at the level of agreement? It's like you are new to this side of the world. Do you know how many such agreements would have been signed and, at the end of the day, nothing happened? Let's pray this materializes, sha. But don’t celebrate yet until you see things working.

Which Ajaokuta steel?
From Nigeria or Gambia.

Everyone just wan cash out from government every tenure, the company has not produced one billet since Buhari regime.

Just continue to tell us another and more lies again. Every regime with another fake promise. I don't blame Tinubu or Obasanjo, I only blame Buhari and his co travellers for over throwing the regime that initiated that project.

TimeMachine2:
You will still ne on nairaland.com till 2045 and obi will never be president.

I agree with you that Obi will never be president but that's not the reason why the politicians you support are living large while you shout 'Obi will never be president' with empty stomach on every thread.

Judolisco:
Ajaokuta get managing director ke? Arbi na my eyes?

You mean damaging director

If the news is not one of gloom and doom they are never happy.
Even the happy rescue of school children from kidnappers became a source of sadness for them.

Orisirisi

Gas supply to an entity that produces nothing.

TimeMachine2:
You will still ne on nairaland.com till 2045 and obi will never be president.

How does that invalidate APC being A-looter Propaganda Conmen, with regards to this recycled Ajaokuta story

Abi you know why the company is still moribund four years after Buhari sunk $400 million into it?




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q99rdbJB19Q

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

We like hyperbole too much for our country.

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

Do you really mean the bolded part? Could you please share links to this gas supply arrangement that existed already.

Judolisco:
Ajaokuta get managing director ke? Arbi na my eyes?

Ajaokuta has pensioners that government still pays monthly

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

Critical thinker/Industry insider/Informed Nairalander spotted.

An AI chatbot makes it own assessment below...

## 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.

ElSudani:
If the news is not one of gloom and doom they are never happy.
Even the happy rescue of school children from kidnappers became a source of sadness for them.

You have just described the master strategist and his fellow demons of Oshiomole's Assembly of Past Criminals, APC when they were fighting for power, to grab and run with it to make Jonathan a one term president in favour of Buhari. The same Buhari he called expired four years earlier.

EkoIle1:
It is now abundantly clear that President Jonathan has finally bared his fangs confirming what was widely speculated. By declaring a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, he has intimidated and emasculated the governors of these States. We are witnessing a dangerous trend in the art of governance and a deliberate ploy to subvert constitutional democracy.

The body language of the Jonathan administration leads any keen watcher of events with unmistakable conclusion of the existence of a surreptitious but barely disguised intention to muzzle the elected governments of these states for what is clearly a display of unpardonable mediocrity and diabolic partisanship geared towards 2015.

Borno and Yobe states have been literally under armies of occupation with the attendant excruciating hardship experienced daily by the indigenes and residents of these areas. This government now wants to use the excuse of the security challenges faced by the Governors to remove them from the states considered hostile to the 2015 PDP/Jonathan project.

Let me be quick to say that this administration will be setting in motion a chain of events the end of which nobody can predict. Experience has shown clearly that actions, such as this one under consideration, often give root to radical ideologies and extremist tendencies, a direct opposite of the intended outcome of unwarranted and unintelligent meddlesomeness. The present scenario playing out in the country reminds one of the classical case of a mediocre craftsman who continually blames the tools of his trade for his serial failure but refuses to look at his pitiable state with a view to adjusting.

It has become crystal clear, even to the most incurable optimist, that the country is adrift. That the ship of the Nigerian state is rudderless is clearly evident in the consistent and continual attacks ferociously executed by elements often referred to as the insurgents in some northern states of the federation, particularly Borno and Yobe states respectively.

Indeed, no part of the country is immune from the virulent but easy attacks, veritable indices of a failing state. Unfortunately, the tenuous and uncoordinated approach adopted by this government betrays a grossly incompetent disposition which stands at variance with current realities in the country, nay the international community where acts of terrorism are engaged and contained. No Governor of a state in Nigeria is the Chief Security Officer. Putting the blame on the Governors, who have been effectively emasculated, for the abysmal performance of the government at the centre which controls all these security agencies, smacks of ignorance and mischief.

http://premiumtimesng.com/opinion/134435-jonathan-goes-for-broke-by-bola-ahmed-tinubu.html

I

abc115:
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2026/07/tinubu-breaks-46-year-ajaokuta-steel-jinx-as-nnpcl-signs-20-year-gas-supply-deal/

Nonsense and ingredients.
Another means to steal money.
Is it gas that is stopping the Ajaokuta steal from running?
When one looting machine (ghost agency) close, they open another one.

anonimi:
You have just described the master strategist and his fellow demons of Oshiomole's Assembly of Past Criminals, APC when they were fighting for power, to grab and run with it to make Jonathan a one term president in favour of Buhari. The same Buhari he called expired four years earlier.

When you focus too much on the past it often leads to a cycle of nolstagic regret, and anxiety and sadness. It drains your mental energy and prevents you from engaging with the present.
You need to snap out of it.