Reps appropriated N2bn for Ajaokuta concession ―Fayemi

THE Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Dr Kayode Fayemi has revealed that the House of Representatives duly appropriated the sum of N2,096,500.00 for the concession of the Ajaokuta Steel Complex in the 2017 budget, wondering why the same House has now turned around to attack the ministry for implementing the law.

Dr Fayemi who disclosed this in Abuja said both the ministry and the National Assembly had been on the same page regarding the need to concession the Steel Complex, adding that the ministry had been canvassing the concession option in all its meetings and sectoral debates with the lawmakers.

He said the government had taken a decision not to spend an additional one dollar on Ajaokuta since over $8 billion dollars had been sunk into the project by successive administrations since 1982.

The minister said government decided to give the complex to a credible operator with proven technical capacity and financial wherewithal to run it more profitably, saying this necessitated the appropriation of over N2 billion dollars for the concession in the 2017 appropriation duly passed into law by the same lawmakers now opposed to the concession.

According to him, “we are just implementing what was passed by the National Assembly that is why we are surprised that we have been subjected to an unwarranted attack over the matter in the last one week.”

Dr Fayemi said the March 1, 2018 sectoral debate which himself and the Minister of State, Honourable Abubakar Bawa Bwari, could not attend, and for which they duly notified the lawmakers, was the first and only time they would be absent at such debates, having attended four previously, with focus on Ajaokuta and the steel sector.

The Minister stated that most of the allegations made against him, the Minister of State and the Ministry officials were not only unfounded but malicious.

He said while the House members reserved the right to discuss and pass resolutions on national issues, he took serious exception to a member of the House going outside the hallowed chambers to make spurious allegations against public servants.

Fayemi revealed also that the technical audit, which would determine the actual cost of fixing Ajaokuta Steel Complex, was still ongoing, and would be ready in six weeks.

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Specifically, the minister said that contrary to insinuations, the Russian government had never approached the ministry nor the Federal Government to signify interest in running the complex.

He, however, confirmed that some companies in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Nigeria had expressed interest in taking over the Ajaokuta Complex, but that the ministry’s stand was that they should wait till an open and competitive bid for the steel complex would be opened.

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This, he said would happen after certain things have been put in place including the technical audit.

Dr Fayemi said that the idea that the Ajaokuta complex was 98 per cent completed could best be determined by the outcome of the technical audit, without which he said insistence on the 98 per cent completion amount to mere sloganeering.

“Ajaokuta is an inherited challenge. The Chief Olusegun Obasanjo administration concessioned it, the President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua government revoked it. And the case went to London Court of Arbitration. Its resolution in 2016 led to the signing of the Modified NIOMCO Agreement, which ceded the complex back to the Federal Government and NIOMCO to Global Steel.

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“No fewer than 14 parties have shown interest in running the complex, but government’s position is that we would not do any concession without a technical audit.

“PriceWaterHouse Cooper was engaged to do a review of the company’s indebtedness and statutory liabilities as part of the settlement agreement.” He explained.