Today
Nigeria still holds large coal reserves, estimated to be at least 2 billion metric tons. The discovery of bituminous coal suitable for use in coke production for the iron and steel industries opens up potential new domestic markets. With the loss of its largest domestic consumers, the NCC began exporting coal to Italy and the United Kingdom, as its low sulfur content is desirable.
In 1999, the NCC lost its monopoly over the Nigerian coal industry as the Obasanjo government allowed private companies to begin operating coal fields in joint ventures with the NCC, with an eventual goal of completely selling off the NCC's assets to private investors. The Nigerian government planned to sell 40% to private investors and 20% to the Nigerian public, while retaining 40%.
In 2002, work stopped at NCC-operated mines. In 2003, the Nigerian government announced plans to create a technical advisory committee that would be tasked with reviving Nigeria's coal industry.
By 2004, the technical committee had still not issued their report, and the NCC found itself almost bankrupt. To raise funds, it began to sell off some of its assets in an attempt to pay off its mounting debt, including salary that was owed to its employees. Additionally, the Enugu State Government protested the planned NCC privatization and demanded the ability to consult with the Federal Government on any planned sale.
While references are made in the news media to a possible sale of the NCC, the Nigerian Bureau of Public Enterprises, the government body tasked with selling public corporations, still lists the NCC as an asset for sale on their website as of April 2008, and no news reports to date provide any information about the supposed sale.
Read more about this topic: Nigerian Coal Corporation
Famous quotes containing the word today:
“Whether we regard the Women’s Liberation movement as a serious threat, a passing convulsion, or a fashionable idiocy, it is a movement that mounts an attack on practically everything that women value today and introduces the language and sentiments of political confrontation into the area of personal relationships.”
—Arianna Stassinopoulos (b. 1950)
“All great art, and today all great artlessness, must appear extreme to the mass of men, as we know them today. It springs from the anguish of great souls. From the souls of men not formed, but deformed in factories whose inspiration is pelf.”
—Alexander Trocchi (1925–1983)
“We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered, that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)