The National Association of Kogi State Students (NAKOSS) has expressed a determination to defend the government over the ownership of the Obajana Cement up to the International Court of Justice, accusing the Dangote Group of exploitation and intimidation.

The students backed the Kogi government’s demands in a statement signed by Rachael Balogun, the president of NAKOSS.

The students from various institutions across Nigeria, who accused the Dangote Group of conducting “devastating economic injustice on the people of the state,” commended Governor Yahaya Bello and the Kogi House of Assembly for insisting on correcting what they described as the age-long economic intimidation and exploitation by the Dangote Group.

They also alleged that the Dangote firm exploited Kogi for years resulting in deaths due to environmental hazards of the company’s activities and “in the hands of its reckless drivers that have killed many across Nigeria.”

According to their statement, the failure of the management of Dangote Cement to show evidence of responsible transfer of the shares of the company belonging to Kogi suggests that the company allegedly robbed “indigenes of Kogi of their birth rights.”

“As indigenes of Kogi state, we affirm that the government of Kogi state, under Alhaji Yahaya Bello, should be commended for demanding evidence of a strange agreement that delivered our birth rights, 100 per cent, on a platter of gold to Dangote Group,” added the statement. 

It noted that the Obajana Cement factory was established and “nurtured” by the Kogi government until Dangote offered to partner the state. 

“There are documents already in the public domain detailing the economic injustice carried out against the Kogi people in view of an investment that has not for one day benefitted them,” the statement added.

The students further accused the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) of “misleading argument,” noting that “we are duty bound to inform the public that the argument of this association, which the whole world knows is being controlled by Alhaji Aliko Dangote, is lopsided and lacks merit.”

According to the statement, the Dangote company has been responsible for several deaths, including environmental degradation.

“With many either dying daily from environmental hazards arising from Dangote’s activities in the area or in the hands of its reckless drivers that have killed many across Nigeria (countless Kogi state students inclusive). All these hazards, yet nothing accrues to the government from a concern it created,” the students claimed.

(NAN)