MONUMENTS OF WASTE: ABANDONED PROJECTS AND IGNOBLE EPITAPHS OF CORRUPTION
“O children of Adam! Wear your beautiful apparel at every time and place of prayer; eat and drink; but waste not by excess, for God loves not the wasters.” (Quran 7:31)
By Babatunde Jose
Nigeria will not cease to amaze discerning observers; few countries have as much epigraphs of waste and abandoned projects as we have. The landscape of this country is littered with over 20,000 abandoned projects or ‘epitomes of waste’. Everywhere you look the eyesores convey a country festooned with a political class for whom discontinuity and shortsightedness have been elevated into an art of form. Some of these projects have assumed a life of their own; some of them, spanning over forty years. The cost of these abandoned projects in terms of financial, economic and socio-economic losses is simply beyond measure. Apart from readily serving as conveyor belts through which money is laundered, they are also ignoble epitaphs of corruption.
Kenechukwu Obiezu commenting on this sorry state said: _” this invidious legacy is merely a symptom and not a cause, nursed and condoned successively much to our own harm. It is indeed a symptom of the diseased governance we have gleefully entrenched; estates padded up with white elephant projects and utopian promises, shocking short sightedness, lack of experience in leadership, conspicuous poverty of promising antecedents and poorly concealed predilection for avarice and idolatry, we choose other relatively insignificant considerations. Poorly informed and even more impoverished in vision and vigilance, we condone and let ourselves be whipped into nauseating queues of ethnic, religious and fiscal jingoists.”_
In 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan empaneled the Abandoned Projects Audit Commission. Its report told the story of a country on the verge of abandoning even its own soul. The Commission estimated that about 11,886 Federal Government projects were abandoned in the country in the last 40 years. On May 26, 2016, the former Director-General of the Bureau of Public Procurement, Emeka Eze, revealed that the number of government projects abandoned across the country stood at 19,000. The trend has obviously been on the rise.
During a burial ceremony at the old Ikoyi cemetery, Alhaji Femi Okunnu on looking at the abandoned Federal Secretariat Complex could not hide his lamentation. That was a complex that could be described as the crowning jewel of his tenure as our longest serving Federal Commissioner of Works during the Yakubu Gowon Military Administration. The abandoned Federal Secretariat has been laying waste for over 30 years.
In Lagos alone, we can cite other monuments of waste such as the Trade Fair Complex; purpose-built exhibition halls and offices, complete with a lake motel, restaurants and an amphitheater: It was abandoned for inexplicable reasons and farmed out to motor spare part sellers while today, trade fairs are held at the TBS a complex that was built to serve as a parade ground. Haba!
The most shameful of all the monuments of waste are the 40-year-old, multi-billion-dollar Ajaokuta Steel Complex and the Mambilla Hydroelectric Project.
The Ajaokuta saga started in 1976, when the Federal Government of Nigeria under General Olusegun Obasanjo, signed a global contract with TyajzPromExport (TPE) of the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics for the establishment of the Ajaokuta Steel project. The proposed date of completion was 1986 but it was never completed till date, due to policy inconsistencies and massive project corruption for which no one was ever punished. According to Professor Kole Omotosho, the project was abandoned “after it had become one of the bottomless drainpipes of the national coffers.”
In 1986, former President Babangida signed a new contract with the same Soviet firm, the TPE, with a new completion date of 1989. The project was also later abandoned when it was nearly completed, and no reason was given for its abandonment till date.
In all, Nigeria spent $5bn on the Ajaokuta Steel Complex project which was supposed to cost $650m. In anticipation of its going on stream, Nigeria was listed as the 40th steel producing nation in the world but, by 2010 the country was no longer listed at all. Shameless nation!
It is instructive to note that during its period in the wilderness, the country spent over N2.1 trillion on steel importation: A nation of wastrels! It is sad to note that “During the same period, the TPE successfully completed on schedule, steel complex projects for various countries around the world including China, South Korea and Brazil.
Another dimension to the Ajaokuta debacle is the story of the Itakpe/Ajaokuta/Warri standard gauge railway line. Construction began in 1987 on an industrial railway to supply the Ajaokuta Steel Mill with iron ore and coal. After a protracted construction period of more than 30 years, the railway was finally inaugurated in 2020 as a mixed freight and passenger line. Construction is underway on an extension to Abuja, where it will connect to the Lagos–Kano Standard Gauge Railway. But ironically, the steel mill is yet to start production.
BEWILDERINGLY, Nigeria has become a cauldron of white elephants, one of the most symbolic of the lot should be the Mambilla hydropower plant located in Taraba State, which was initiated during the Shehu Shagari administration in 1982. Forty-two years later, the 3,050-megawatt project is yet to generate one watt of electricity. One phrase sums up this fiasco: shame of a nation.
The project is billed to be a game-changer in a nation reeling under the crushing weight of poor power generation capacity that only intermittently attains a temporary peak of 4,600MW. In terms of scope, the project is the biggest hydroelectric dam in Africa. The Mambilla project has been stalled in spite of the seeming efforts of successive governments to get it off the ground. It is rather unfortunate that the project which is in the running for over 40 years is still mired in corruption scandal of unimaginable proportion, spanning several administrations.
With the grim picture we have painted, Nigeria’s hope of becoming a technologically developed country would remain a mirage if corruption and waste are not immediately addressed. Added to this is a litany of woes: Botched privatization imposed on the nation by SAP in the 80s. Privatized companies in the steel sector that used to employ up to 20,000 workers now have less than 4,000 after the exercise.
Peugeot Automobile of Nigeria (PAN) in February 2022, after about five decades of operating the Peugeot assembly plant, relinquished the brand and opted for two Chinese brands, Chery and Higer.
The Nigerian Sugar Company (NISUCO), Bacita, used to employ about 40,000 workers before it became moribund. The company had over 30,000 hectares of sugarcane farm with a production capacity of 300 metric tonnes of sugarcane per day.
In 2006, the Josepdam Group paid $49m to acquire NISUCO, and its name was changed to Josepdam Sugar Company.
Unfortunately, the story changed. The situation on the ground now is nothing but a sorry sight as the company has since gone under, after the demise of its owner who died in a plane crash. Production in the sugar estate has stopped since 2011.
The few workers left at the place have not tasted sugar from the factory for many years. Even their wages have remained unpaid for years.
Because sugarcane was no longer grown on the vast expanse of land, which was left idle for so long, residents of Bacita took over the land and turned it to rice plantations.
In 2016, AMCON took over control of Josepdam Sugar Company, as the owners could not repay its outstanding debts.
There are many ‘Bacita Sugar’ companies in the country begging for resuscitation, but with the lackadaisical attitude of our governments to abandoned and moribund projects, such projects will continue to languish in waste and the country will continue to suffer.
The Zuma Steel rolling mill in Jos and the Osogbo Steel Rolling Mill and the Nigeria Machine Tools Company have become moribund.
Stakeholders in the state of Osun have bemoaned the abandonment of the Steel Rolling Mill and Nigeria Machine Tools, calling for the review of the privatisation of the industries. Both of them were privatized in November 2005. Their continual closure has cost the nation billions of naira. Other steel companies sold include: The Nigerian Iron Ore Mining Company, Itakpe in Kogi State; Delta Steel Company, Ovwian Aladja and The Katsina Rolling Mill. Of all these, it is only the Katsina Rolling Mill that is functioning, while the Delta Steel Company is operating at around 10 per cent capacity.
No doubt, if indeed such a monumental number of wastes could be chalked up by the Federal Government, a fortiori, the state Governments must be faring a lot worse.
The Oodua Group, an investment and business conglomerate owned by the Southwest states is a classic case of the topic under review. It’s Cocoa Industry that used to produce Vitalo, which rivaled Ovaltine, Milo and Bournvita in those days has become moribund.
Daily Sketch in Ibadan also went the same way including Cashew Industry and Askar Paint in Ibadan are all languishing in the dustbin of history.
Nigeria Romania Wood Industry, in Ondo State is also dead, despite its great promise and potential with its own dedicated forest. Founded in 1974, less than fifteen years after the company began operations, it went down the drain, a situation which some experts in tree planting and environment, linked with the rise in the felling and burning of economic trees and deforestation. NIROWI, situated in a large area of land of over 40 hectares abandoned over the years has become the den of kidnappers, joints of ritualists and the centre of illegal activities.
The same fate befell, Oluwa Glass Industry at Igbokoda, which at one time was producing windshields for cars. TINAPA: A N60bn investment in Cross River State has gone moribund.
How did we get to this sorry state? This is a matter for serious conjecture and sober reflection. It is however borne of a culture of neglect and abandonment: A lackadaisical and unwholesome attitude which has turned erstwhile leaders into traitorous scoundrels and scallywags.
*Evil has spread over the land and the sea because of corruption and hence, Allah will cause some people to suffer so that perhaps they will return to Him. (Quran 30:41)*
*Our leaders should remember: The Gates of Hell are not closed.*
*Barka Juma’at and happy weekend.*
*Babatunde Jose*
*Friday 26th July 2024*
