FIJ
The National Assembly has called for investigations into a $496 million compensation Nigeria paid to Global Infrastructure Holding Limited (GIHL), an Indian company the federal government cancelled a concession agreement with.
GIHL received $496 million after it took the Nigerian government to court over a breach of contractual agreement.
Reports have, however, portrayed the GIHL issue as a shocking revelation for the senators on the National Assembly Joint Committee on Steel Development who heard Abubakar Audu, the Minister of Steel Development, defend his 2024 budget.
FIJ has found that the federal government made no investigation into Global Infrastructure Holding Limited, as it paid billions to the company despite a litany of complaints about fraud in the company as far back as 2016.
NIGERIA’S DEAL WITH GLOBAL INFRASTRUCTURE HOLDING LTD
The Nigerian government recognises the iron and steel industry as indispensable aspects of national industrialisation. At the start of Nigeria’s fourth republic, President Olusegun Obasanjo planned to privatise Ajaokuta Steel and other steel companies. Obasanjo gave Messrs SOLGAS Energy, an American company, control of Ajaokuta in 2003 but terminated the 10-year concession contract for its poor performance in 2004.
Reports claim that GIHL took control of the National Iron Ore Mining Company in Itakpe, Kogi State, in 2016, but GIHL actually got a contract similar to SOLGAS Energy’s from Obasanjo around 2005.
What happened in 2016 was a repossession of the Itakpe mining company with permission from the federal government.
“The Obasanjo regime decided against putting more money into the plant and sought to concession it under its privatisation programme. Global Infrastructure (Nigeria) Ltd (GINL), an Indian company owned by Pramod Mittal, one of the famous Mittal brothers whose separate companies had global acquisitions and operations in steel production, was given a ten-year concession in 2004 for the Ajaokuta steel complex,” a research paper published with the Lagos Business School in 2016 stated.
