Ajaokuta
About
Ajaokuta is a Local Government Area in Kogi State, Nigeria, and the name of a town within it on the left bank of the Niger River. The headquarters of the LGA is the town of Egayin in the south of the area. The area covers 1,362 square kilometres and had a population of 122,321 at the 2006 census. The town is best known as the home of the Ajaokuta Steel Mill, the largest steel mill in Nigeria, which has been a major national industrial project.
History
The steel mill was begun by the Soviet Union in 1979 under a cooperation agreement with Nigeria, and the complex reached 98% completion by 1994. The project has been described as the bedrock of Nigeria's industrialization, but it has been mismanaged, and the mill had not produced a single sheet of steel as of December 2017. In 1987 a contract was awarded for a standard gauge railway linking the iron mines at Itakpe to the steelworks at Ajaokuta and onward to the port city of Warri. As of August 2017 the Warri–Ajaokuta–Itakpe line was still incomplete, and the Itakpe to Ajaokuta section had been vandalised. The government planned to repair and reopen it in June 2018.
Source: Wikipedia: Ajaokuta
Key Facts
State
Kogi State
Headquarters
Egayin
Chairman
Haruna Aliyu Ogido
Area
1,362 km²
Population
122,321 (2006 census)