The Federal Government spent about N7.21bn running Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited between 2020 and 2025, even as the nearly 50-year-old complex in Kogi State remained largely dormant.
The expenditure spanned 501 transactions and covered taxes and other statutory obligations, pension and housing-fund contributions, maintenance, road works, and other infrastructure-related payments, according to spending records obtained.
GovSpend tracks and analyses Federal Government spending over time.
The spending occurred as Nigeria continued to rely heavily on imported steel, with the country’s iron and steel imports exceeding $1tn in 2025, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.
Nigeria’s iron and steel imports averaged about N526bn annually over the past six years, the NBS data showed. The figures represent officially recorded trade and exclude possible unrecorded or under-reported imports.
Ajaokuta was conceived in 1979 and built with Soviet backing as a cornerstone of Nigeria’s industrialisation drive.
The complex was designed to produce up to five million tonnes of steel annually, using the country’s iron-ore reserves to reduce dependence on imports and support industrial development.
Yet the spending records show that the company continued to incur substantial costs during the six years despite the plant’s inability to deliver the large-scale steel production for which it was designed.
In 2020, spending linked to Ajaokuta stood at about N795.4m across 57 transactions. The figure rose to N1.19bn in 2021, when 119 transactions were recorded, before falling to about N1.01bn in 2022.
Spending increased to N1.36bn in 2023 and peaked at about N1.66bn in 2024 across 107 transactions. It then fell to approximately N1.20bn in 2025. The figures indicate that the expenditure was not a one-off intervention but a recurring cost associated with the state-owned steel company.
