Delta Steel Company: A dirge to a crippled giant

By Okorohohi Michael, Warri,

In those days when some of us were in primary school, there was a popular hymn that was common during the closing assembly session. It is Hymn Ancient and Modern 431 which says: ‘Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh, shadows of the evening, steal across the sky’. The situation at the Delta Steel Company, Ovwian-Aladja being operated by Premium Steel and Mines Limited brings into focus the reality of this hymn and the fact that DSC, which was the pride of every Urhobo man and Deltans in the early 80s is finally close to Golgotha and may be laid to rest sooner than one can imagine.

The dream of the founding fathers of the first and only integrated steel complex in Nigeria is gradually being transfixed and decapitated. Over the years, since the gradual fall of the company in 1984 when Senator Fred Brume was removed and made to suffer in the hands of the then military government for almost two years, DSC has not been able to recover her old self. Here was a company that poached the best hands from SPDC and other major international organizations in the formative years of the operation of the plant in 1979 to 1983. Those who witnessed the glorious years of the plant only shed bitter tears at home at the sight of what politics, corruption and man’s wickedness have reduced the company to. To the many old staff of the once flourishing plant, the place now represents a shattered dream.  The Delta Steel Company is completely down and out no thanks to the inept operations of the current owners, Premium Steel and Mines Limited, who have completely run the place aground.

In the beginning: Built in 1979 and commissioned in 1980, Delta Steel Company was the first and only integrated plants in the country, consisting of units such as; Beneficiating and pelletizing plant, Direct Reduction (DR) plant, made up of two modules, the steel melting shop, the continuous casting shop, the air separation plant, the foundry, and the general maintenance shop with feeder units in various process departments. No other still plant in the country has such complete units.

At the peak of its glory, the Delta Steel complex was a beehive of activities by men and machines, labouring day and night at various units where blazing fire and thick smoke escaped non-stop into the huge sky of Ovwian -Aladja towns. Then, DSC was producing over 200,000 metric tons of liquid steel, and supplying materials for inland rolling mills at Osogbo, Jos, Katsina including Ajaokuta Steel Industry – currently, all the mills now lie comatose despite decades of funding by the Federal Government.

By 1984, DSC ran into troubled waters with the arrest of then Pioneer General Manager, Senator Fred Brume and travails which lasted over a year. He was released without trial but he never returned to the plant and things were not to remain the same again. Politics took over the place of excellence and patriotic desire to deliver and one thing led to the other and the plant crumbled.

In the wake of the privatization policy of the federal government, DSC was sold to Global Infrastructure Holding Limited which operated the plant for a couple of years but had issues and the deal was cancelled in 2010. By 2014, Premium Steel and Mines Limited came into the picture with questionable credentials but the host communities, desirous of reactivation of the plant, decided to give the new owners the benefit of the doubts. But it is getting clear that the confidence reposed in the company has been misplaced and regrets are already setting in.

Under the management of the former MD/CEO, Mr Prasanta Mishra, the company was reopened with fanfare when Governor Ifeanyi Okowa stormed the plant in March 2018 for the commissioning of the new and refurbished Rolling Mill. Federal Government officials from BPE, AMCON and the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development were on hand to be part of the ceremony. During that event, Mr Mishra promised that in a matter of two years, all the sections of the plant would have been completed and operational. The timelines gave details of how the plant would be reactivated in phases. New trucks were seemingly purchased for haulage services for finished products. PSML boasted of having secured the partnership of some world-class names in steel development and that in no time, DSC will come alive again to the shame of naysayers.

Assurances: Precisely in 2019, in response to queries raised by groups and concerned individuals over the state of affairs at the plant, the CEO, Mr. Mishra assured that ‘’we are doing a total turn-around of the company with installation of modern equipment just as we have continued to impact on the immediate community where we operate through our Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. The Rolling Mill is working at full blast and the next in line is the SMS shop which will guarantee local production of billets. We are targeting the third quarter of next year for the SMS to come on-stream and by June 2021, the entire plant would have been activated. When PSML took over the plant, we met just 5 staff on board. Today, with the level of work done so far to bring the plant to life, we have over 500 staff principally sourced from the Nigerian labour market. By the time the SMS is activated and the other sectors fully back to production level, we shall be talking of over 5,000 direct and indirect staff in the plant. So it is not fair to suggest that the plant was in bad shape’’, Mr. Mishra added.

New Management: But last year, Mr. Prasanta Mishra left the shores of Nigeria supposedly on leave and by 2021 Mr Ujjiwal Sinha has resumed as acting Managing Director. Under the new management, the company has totally stopped working. For over two weeks as at the time of writing, not even one rod has been produced by the plant. Many of the staff have been dropped and new ones are not being employed.

One of the staff who spoke to this writer on condition of anonymity disclosed that DSC is dead, confirming the earlier postulation by an Udu youth leader, Comrade Ese Ogboru, who disclosed that the new owners were mere undertakers. Journalists who tried to inquire about the state of things at the plant are not given any official responses. The policy of the present management is to keep mute as the process of folding up continues.

Reaction of Staff: ‘’We are not sure of anything again. We are being owed many months salaries in arrears. The ships that bring billets from overseas have stopped coming. And once there are no billets, the rolling mill cannot work. We are not even talking of the other sections, everything has come to a stand-still. These people are not ready to reactivate this plant and it is very unfortunate. The truth is, DSC is dead’’, a worker lamented.

According to inside sources, most of the facilities like trucks for conveying finished products have been evacuated to unknown sites. Talking about assets, stripping, our source disclosed that many valuable assets have been removed from the plant to unknown places.

‘’Many movable and valuable assets have been removed and sold to God knows who. If PSML quits the stage tomorrow, whoever may come to buy the plant will only come for the carcass. PSML is not serious at all. They are not serious investors and it’s certainly only politics that brought them on board. The host Udu community saw this from afar and complained from the beginning. PSML came with empty briefcases and like the undertakers they are, they have completely decapitated the company. Nothing is left. It is the income from the viable DSC Technical High School that they depend on to run the company. PSML are simply undertakers and they have finished the company’’, another source added.

The Host Community: The host Udu community, at different times, had expressed reservation with the manner and the way the plant was being operated by the new investors, PSML. The Ovie of Udu Kingdom, HRM Barr E.B.O Delekpe JP, Owhorhu 1 had not hidden his views on the ability of Premium Steel to revive the plant, frowning at the evasive nature of the company management.

Udu youths under Comrade Sunday Subi and others had at different times told the company in blunt terms that they were not meeting the expectations of the host communities. But the Presidents of some of the core host communities including, PG of Ovwian, Chief Matthew Uparan; PG of Aladja, Elder Otto Ogbiruveta among others, had cooperated with the company management with the hope of getting the plant to attain her full potential. President General of Udu Kingdom, Chief Godwin Notoma, though not satisfied with the company management, had also solicited for the people’s understanding and cooperation for the company to grow.

When contacted recently to speak on their respective positions on the progress of the plant, they expressed disappointment with the pace of development calling for a more concerted push by investors to get the plant to attain her lost glory.

To Chief Sam Odibo, the Otota and traditional Prime Minister of the Udu people, PSML is engaged in asset stripping and that the company is not being operated in the direction of growth and progress.

‘’Assets stripping come in different manners. Taking what is there in the DSC Schools, for instance, and diverting it with a view to ensuring that proceeds are used wrongly is asset stripping. This includes money paid by indigenous parents as school fees and other fees in the DSC Technical High School and primary schools. The Indians are supposed to make their profit and run the school perfectly, but what the Indians are doing now is take the whole money and use it for themselves to fly in and out of the country; that is an aspect of asset stripping. The Siemens machines that are supposed to be used to supply telephone lines to every house in township 1,2,3,4 have been sold. There are pictures showing when they were carted away. The machine that was supposed to supply telephone lines to the entire administrative building and all the offices and other places have also been sold and taken away to an unknown place. These are people that bought DSC with a view to putting in place whatever has gone bad, repair and revive these machines and make them functional rather than carting them away. The turbines, capable of supplying power to the entire townships and plant machines are no more. Selling obsolete equipment as scraps is not the issue really, the issue is to know the arrangement made to replace those machines sold. The Indians came to DSC to run the company just to remove the flesh and leave the carcass. That is why they decided to stay far away. There is no arrangement to give the place power, they stay far away and sell anything sellable. Assets stripping as alleged by the Host communities is going on. It is most unfortunate that DSC with all its prospects and glory is being cannibalized so heartlessly by the Indians and we cannot fold our arms to watch this continue. We as leaders cannot stop the community presidents from agitating for what they believe is right’’, Chief Sam Odibo had said in an interview with newsmen.

Explanations by Management: In reaction to allegations of asset stripping sometime in 2019, then Deputy General Manager, Public Affairs, Mr Emmanuel Etaghene revealed that some of the assets were being evacuated to make room for modern technology and such could not be classified as assets stripping. He added that in no time, the Steel Melting Shop (SMS), will come on stream for improved production activities with the multiplier effect on job creation and ancillary services for a boom in the local economy.

Speaking in the same vein during a ‘Meet the Press Luncheon’, in 2019 organized by management of PSML, the General Manager, Mechanical, Engr Samuel Tanno, disclosed that Premium Steel was producing high valued steel products for construction companies like Julius Beggar, CCECC and other construction giants in the country and that the repairs and other highly fortified construction steel products from PSML are in high demand in the local and international markets.

He disclosed further that Premium Steel had successfully installed modern equipment and machinery in the Rolling Mill with ancillary sub-plants like the Cooling, power, a new compressor and server room where all ‘’ABB in the world are linked through a server, global control automation which is a new innovation in the industrial world for the integrity of the operations of all Steel plants on the global scene.

‘’Most of those machines and equipment installed in 1980 cannot meet up with modern production demands in the face of highly sensitive modern technology. Laying off of those obsolete equipment and replacing them with advanced ones is what Premium Steel is doing. Cutting edge technology had overtaken the old, almost analogue technology of the 80s and in the spirit of the jet age, modern and more efficient, though smaller technology is being deployed to drive the production processes towards achieving better results’’, he added, stressing that all that the company needed to perform optimally was the cooperation of the press and host communities. Two years on, nothing has happened.

Recent attempts to speak with Engr. Nsidinaya Aloysius, General Manager, Administration; Emmanuel Etaghene, GM, None-Core; Mr Austin Adiri, GM Estate Services and other top management staff of the company did not yield any appreciable result as they were not willing to talk about the state of the plant. Under Prasanta Mishra, the company was forthcoming with explanations, building hope, but under Mr Sinha, it appears PSML has run out of lies and the new policy is to be mute.

Present state of things in the plant: Nobody knows what is happening at the plant. The company under the present head, Mr Ujjiwal Sinha operates in deep secrecy. But inside sources have confirmed that little and in most cases, no activity is taking place. Production has stopped completely and the once glorious Delta Steel Company, Ovwian-Aladja now exists only in name. All the promises to revamp the SMS plant which is the heart of steel production have ended up a mirage.

Our findings reveal that a larger chunk of billets imported so far was sold out to smaller companies instead of being rolled in the plant. That presupposes that the company had been having issues unknown to outsiders. What the Bureau of Public Enterprises seems to be interested in is the sale of land assets and buildings in the staff estates. AMCON cannot pretend to be unaware of the gross mismanagement of the company by PSML but there also seems to be a collusion between management of PSML and AMCON hence the ‘hear no evil, see no evil’ stance of the regulatory agency. The Udu and Urhobo people may need to rise up to challenge the government to do the needful otherwise they will wake up someday to discover that the Delta Steel Company has been reduced to a poultry farm. A Nunc Dimittis is ahead for DSC but against the Biblical canticle of Simeon, which says, ‘Lord, let thy servant depart in peace, the DSC case may be Canticle of Judas Iscariot to wit: ‘Let DSC depart in pieces’. PSML has failed completely to revive the plant. The only path of redemption for DSC is for the government to detach the plant from primitive politics and allow better hands to drive it out of the woods unto Eldorado.