By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA – FOLLOWING Nigeria’s comatose steel sector and poor industrialisation policy, the Director General, National Metallurgical Development Centre, NMDC, Jos, Prof. Ibrahim Madugu, said inadequate fund has stalled development in the sector.

naira

Madugu, who said this while fielding questions from journalists in Abuja, also asserted that the sector would have been at the same level with some industrialised countries had the past administrations been determined to revolutionise the sector with adequate funding to attract investors.

His words: “If the sector is adequately funded, I assure you that the sector could have placed Nigeria on equal footing with some industrialised nations. And that would have turned the steel sector around.

“I assure you that the former Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Mr. Musa Sada, could have been able to place Nigeria on equal footing with some industrialised nations.

“The government would have transformed the entire steel sector and caused a breakthrough in the nation’s revenue generation, job creation, and attraction of more investors.” However, the NMDC boss also disclosed that the centre can boast of some modern equipment acquired during the last administration that would make Nigeria self-sufficient in steel production.

According to him, the centre has the capacity of providing competent services to the public and private sectors, as it is also making efforts to conduct research and strengthen the mineral data bank of the country for prospective investors. “The National Metallurgical Development Centre has achieved a lot in terms of state of the art research and development equipment like electric arc furnace, lead-zinc plant and metal testing facilities among others.

“We have also procured robust tensile testing machines – AAS, XRD and XRF, which are high profile equipment. We acquired them during the former government. We intend to commercialise some of them in order to boost the internally generated revenue in the Centre.

We have a lead-zinc pilot plant which will be the first in West Africa. When fully operational, the country will be able to produce some amount of lead/zinc ingots for local consumption. “One of the electrical arc furnaces will be used for slag processing while the second will be used to conduct a different kind of research into steel. When this is done, NMDC would be able to produce automobile parts.

“To this end, the NMDC has already signed a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, with the Centre for Automotive Design based in Zaria. We will be producing some steel parts for them such as crane shaft, crankshaft, connecting rods, block engines, brake drums, and wheels. These will all come to fruition very soon. “We will be able to produce corrugated roofing sheets which are made from Electroplated Zinc and other items,” he stated.