Ownership tussle between the Kogi State and Dangote Group over Obajana Cement Company took another dimension, yesterday, as the National Association of Kogi State Students vowed to defend the stand of the government up to the World Court.
The students, in various institutions across Nigeria, threw their weight behind the state government’s demands in a statement it issued through National President, NAKOSS National, and Chairperson, Council of 36 States Student Presidents (CSSP), Rachael Mojirola Balogun.
They contended that the Dangote Group had, for long, carried out devastating economic injustice on the people of the state.
According to indigenes of the state scattered across tertiary institutions of learning in the country, Governor Yahaya Bello and the state House of Assembly should be commended for insisting on correcting what they described as the age-long economic intimidation and exploitation by the Dangote Group.
They accused Dangote of unfairly exploiting the state for years, with many either dying daily from environmental hazards arising from the company’s activities in the area or in the hands of its reckless drivers “that have killed many across Nigeria with countless Kogi State students inclusive.”
The students said the failure of the management of Dangote Cement to show evidence of responsible transfer of the shares of the company belonging to Kogi State was a clear pointer to the fact that the group allegedly robbed indigenes of Kogi of their birth rights.
They, therefore, insisted on defending the state government’s position up to the World Court.
They described as misleading, argument of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) over the incident, stressing that MAN and other naysayers’ positions on the controversy were lopsided and lacking in merit.
The statement read in part: “As indigenes of Kogi State, we affirm that the government, under Governor Bello, should be commended for demanding evidence of a strange agreement that delivered our birth rights, 100 per cent, on a platter of gold to Dangote Group, despite the fact that Obajana Cement Factory was established and nurtured by the Kogi State Government until Dangote offered to partner the state. There are documents already in the public domain detailing the economic injustice carried out against the Kogi people in view of an investment that has not for one day benefitted them.
“We have listened to the misleading argument of MAN in its statement of Friday, October 7, 2022, and we are duty bound to inform the public that the argument of this association, which the whole world knows is being controlled by Dangote, is lopsided and lacks merit.