Nigeria has struck a gas-supply agreement for its long-idle Ajaokuta Steel Company, a step officials say brings the West African nation closer to reviving a plant that has swallowed more than $8 billion in public money over five decades without ever rolling a single coil of steel.
Under the arrangement, up to 50 million standard cubic feet of gas a day will feed a power plant that services the sprawling metals complex on the banks of the Niger River, about 200 kilometers south of Abuja.
For years, the absence of a reliable gas supply has been the single biggest obstacle cited by would-be investors, according to Nasir Naeem Abdulsalam, the plant’s managing director.
“We have had several different investors across different countries ask the same question: ‘How do we get the supply of gas?'” Abdulsalam said. “Without gas, you can’t operate the steel plant. You can’t operate the independent power generation that we have there. The steel plant and all its components are all powered by gas.”
Abdulsalam was appointed to lead the turnaround effort in April 2025, inheriting a project that has become shorthand in Nigeria for state waste.
