When economists project that the privatisation of Ajaokuta Steel Company could add over $115 billion to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and create tens of thousands of jobs, the numbers understandably capture public attention. In a country long desperate for industrial revival, such figures sound like salvation. Yet figures, however impressive, only skim the surface of a much deeper crisis. The prolonged failure of Ajaokuta is not fundamentally an economic mystery. It is a managerial collapse, aggravated by decades of weak governance and an inability to adapt to the realities of the Digital Age.
For over four decades, Nigeria has poured billions into a steel complex that has produced ambition, litigation, and disappointment, but not steel. In the 2026 budget, the federal government allocated approximately N6.69 billion to the company, with over 90 per cent going to personnel costs rather than production, underscoring its status as a non-performing asset. The reflexive prescription has always been the same: more funding, new ownership, fresh political promises. What has remained curiously absent is a rigorous interrogation of how leadership, management capability, and institutional design have consistently failed this project.
Why Money Has Never Been the Problem
Ajaokuta stands as perhaps the clearest illustration of a truth many governments struggle to accept: capital does not create value. Management does. Nigeria began funding this project in the 1970s, when revenues were plentiful and national confidence was high. Nigeria has invested up to $10 billion in the project over the years without producing steel, while still spending about $4 billion annually on steel imports. This is not because the country lacked financial commitment. It lacked a management system capable of translating investment into execution.
Economics alone cannot explain why successive administrations retained bloated payrolls for a non-producing enterprise, why boards were reshuffled without accountability, or why operational goals were rarely measured, let alone achieved. These are not fiscal failures. They are failures of professional management discipline.
The Digital Age Nigeria Ignored
Another uncomfortable reality is that Ajaokuta has remained conceptually frozen in the industrial logic of the twentieth century. It was designed for an era of centralised planning, analogue processes, and politically mediated decision-making. Modern steel production, by contrast, is defined by digitised operations, real-time data analytics, integrated supply chains, and predictive maintenance systems. Industrial relevance today depends as much on information architecture as on furnaces and ore.
Nigeria’s policy debate has largely ignored this shift. Attempts at revival still speak the language of physical completion and ownership transfer, while neglecting digital transformation. Without a deliberate transition into Industry 4.0 practices, reviving Ajaokuta in its existing managerial form would merely reactivate an obsolete industrial model, incapable of competing regionally or globally.
Governance Failure Disguised as Industrial Policy
International experience shows that state-owned enterprises do not fail simply because the state owns them. They fail when governance is weak, boards are politicised, performance incentives are absent, and transparency is optional. Ajaokuta fits this pattern precisely. Panellists at the recent 4th International Conference on Ajaokuta described it as Nigeria’s “most enduring industrial paradox,” noting that previous concession efforts failed due to lack of transparency, weak technical capacity, and policy inconsistency.
Each collapse was blamed on changing governments, external conspiracies, or technical complexity. Rarely was the question asked: who, exactly, was accountable for delivery? In professional management terms, the answer was almost always: nobody. Where everybody is in charge, nobody truly is.
The deeper tragedy is that Ajaokuta became a symbol of institutional evasion, an enterprise where responsibility was endlessly transferred but never accepted. Instead of a disciplined governance framework, it operated on shifting political loyalties and episodic interventions. No strategic continuity. No performance culture. No independent oversight. The result was predictable: chronic underperformance masked by optimistic rhetoric.
The Risks of Privatisation Without Management Reform
Advocacy for privatisation, while understandable, carries its own dangers if pursued uncritically. Nigeria’s history contains ample evidence that poorly designed privatisation merely transfers public failure into private stagnation. President Bola Tinubu himself recently questioned whether previous privatisations of steel assets had delivered results, noting that those who administered the privatisation programme of an earlier era left a trail of non-functional enterprises.
Selling an asset does not automatically confer managerial competence on its buyer. Without professional management standards, transparent oversight, and digital performance tracking, even private operators can underperform while extracting rents from the system. Privatisation is not a magic wand. It is a governance instrument that succeeds only when discipline, accountability, and regulatory clarity are non-negotiable.
What Must Actually Change
From a Chartered Manager’s perspective, the debate about Ajaokuta needs urgent reframing. The central issue is not whether the project should be publicly or privately owned, but whether it can be competently governed in the Digital Age.
Any credible revival must begin with professionalised governance structures, where board appointments are based on skills rather than politics. Management contracts should be explicitly tied to digitally verified performance indicators. Operational processes must be redesigned for automation, data integration, and efficiency. Leadership must be accountable to outcomes, not intentions.
Steel production is not merely a manufacturing activity. It is an ecosystem. Mining, energy, transport, defence, construction, and export markets are all interconnected. Managing such complexity requires systems thinking, not siloed administration. Proposals currently under negotiation, including a production-sharing framework with Chinese investors anchored on a $2 billion commitment, recognise this integration challenge, with planners stressing that steel production requires an entire logistics ecosystem, not just a functioning furnace. The principle is sound, but execution will depend entirely on governance quality.
The Question Nigeria Must Finally Answer
After four decades of failure, Nigeria must confront a more uncomfortable question than whether Ajaokuta should be privatised. Does the country now possess the managerial maturity required to operate complex industrial systems in a digitally driven global economy?
Ajaokuta has become a mirror, reflecting not a lack of resources, but a deficit of leadership capability and institutional seriousness. Industrialisation is not achieved by pouring concrete or signing concession agreements. It is achieved by building management systems strong enough to endure political change, technological disruption, and economic uncertainty.
No nation industrialises beyond the quality of its governance architecture. Steel plants do not fail because machines are old. They fail because leadership frameworks are weak, decision-making is reactive, and accountability is negotiable.
Nigeria often speaks of infrastructure as roads, power, and factories. Yet the most critical infrastructure of all is management capability. Without it, physical assets decay and investments evaporate. Until Nigeria treats professional management as a public good and a strategic national priority, industrial dreams will continue to rust, no matter how many billions are announced on paper.
Professor Ojo Emmanuel Ademola is the first African Professor of Cybersecurity and Information Technology Management, a Chartered Manager, and a Strategic Advisor on national transformation. He is a Global Education Advocate and UK Digital Journalist.
