Stakeholders in the steel sector have expressed disappointment over President Muhammadu Buhari regime’s failure to complete the Ajaokuta Steel Company as scheduled.

On Tuesday, the stakeholders who spoke with journalists in Abuja said their hopes that the company would become functional before the end of 2023 had been dashed.

They were reacting to a recent announcement by the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Olamilekan Adegbite, that the company would not be fully completed in 2023 as earlier promised.

Yusuf Ayobode, a mechanical engineering graduate, said the steel company’s prompt revival would boost Nigeria’s economy, currently going through uncertainty.

“When I heard the news in 2021 that the steel company will be fully revived before 2023, I became optimistic that Nigeria’s economy will have a positive turnaround,” he noted. “I believed that there will be massive employment for youths like me that graduated over the years without jobs.”

Salawu Onipe, a Kogi indigene and graduate of electrical electronics, said he aspired to work in the steel company while growing up.

“When I read it online in 2020 that the Russian firm that constructed the company will be coming to Nigeria to complete Ajaokuta steel, I was happy and hoping that my dream to work in the company would come to pass,” explained Onipe. “But the latest news that the steel company might not be completed under the current administration got me worried because no past administrations had made efforts to revive the company except this.”

Uchechukwu Ogbonnaya, a former worker at the company, urged the federal government to ensure it bounced back to provide massive employment to Nigerians.

The agreement on how to revive the steel company was reached during a meeting between Mr Buhari and President Vladimir Putin in Russia in 2019 at the Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi.

The Nigerian Steel Development Authority (NSDA) was established in 1971 through Decree 19 to advance the Nigerian steel industry development.

(NAN)