The Kogi State Government has responded to Dangote Industries Limited’s insistence on 100 percent ownership of Obajana Cement Company, saying that DIL’s efforts at making Kogi State’s demand appear unreasonable had only justified the state’s protest against what it described as “callous and deliberate asset grabbing.”
The state government maintained that the Company was solely founded in 1992 and owned by the state, which held 100 percent of its shareholding in trust for its people, long before DIL ventured into the state and longer still before Dangote Cement Plc came into existence.
In the response titled, “Separating Acquisition From Asset-Grabbing”, the Kogi State Government disclosed that it took a loan of at least 15 million Deutsche Marks to conduct feasibility assessments, which confirmed the existence of those ‘vast limestone deposits’ that DIL found so enticing years later.