The Nigerian government has ordered the immediate reopening of the Obajana Cement Company, a cement plant owned and operated by billionaire Aliko Dangote’s cement company, Dangote Cement Plc.
The decision to reopen the cement plant, which was established in 2008, comes after the Kogi State government — a state government in Nigeria’s north-central region — placed the complex under “lock and key” following an ownership dispute with Dangote Industries Limited, Africa’s most diversified manufacturing conglomerate.
The reopening of the plant was one of the decisions made at the October meeting of the National Security Council in Abuja.
The council also proposed that any problems be resolved through legal action, emphasizing that the government’s commitment to generate jobs was non-negotiable and that the cement plant would remain under the control of the cement behemoth.
With a capacity of 16.25 million tonnes per annum across five lines, the Obajana Cement Factory, which opened in 2008, is the group’s flagship plant and the largest of its three factories in Nigeria. The factory, which is backed up by a fleet of 2,370 trucks, has 647 million tonnes of limestone reserves that are estimated to last 45 years.
Resolutions in a report on the validity of Dangote Cement’s claimed acquisition of Obajana Cement Company revealed last week that the transfer of Obajana Cement Company to Dangote Industries Limited was “invalid, null, and void.”
The Kogi State government revealed that its agreement with Dangote Industries Limited, dated July 30, and the supplemental agreement, dated Feb. 14, 2003, representing the transfer of Obajana Cement Company to Dangote Industries Limited, are both invalid, null, and void.
The state government further challenged the ownership of the cement plant, claiming that there is no evidence of consideration paid by Dangote Industries Limited to the Kogi State government from the alleged transfer of Obajana Cement Company and that no dividend was paid to the state from the profits realized from the company’s inception to the present.
