The 42-year-old scrap dealer with over 17 years of experience from his zeal and leadership qualities is the sitting chairman of the Rivers State Council and President of south-south/south-East geopolitical zones.
Ogbu says scraps are the saving grace to the Nigeria recycling industry. He agrees that though Nigeria is blessed with abundant iron ore deposits of nearly 3 billion tonnes for steel production, yet the steel sector has gone moribund due to lack of raw materials for the integrated steel plants and billets for the rolling mills.
People with faith have it that, “God will make a way where there seems to be no way”. This captions the life of over one million unemployed graduates in Nigeria who are scavengers of scraps that would have pitched their tents in cesspit of vice because of frustration caused by hunger and poverty.
To this group of self-help labour popularly called scavengers, it’s an honorable choice of scavenging as their comfort business Zone instead of bank or high way robbery and kidnapping among other vices.
Before the dawn of economic meltdown in Nigeria and across the globe, an unemployed graduate in Nigeria would feel degraded if asked to venture into picking (scavenging) of out use dirty looking scrap metals, plastics, and other condemned domestic and industrial appliances.
Hitherto, these less valued solid wastes are frequently disposed along the streets, gutters, drainage channels, waste dumps, abandoned or undeveloped plots of land and production sites. Scrap characteristically consists of recyclable materials left over from product manufacturing vehicles, building supplies and surplus material with high monetary value to the discerning dealers and end users – recycling industries.
The dogged scrap business dealers are now sustaining the Nigeria steel sector through recycling of scrap steel obtained from municipal solid wastes. Ogbu listed companies like the Federated Steel Mill Sango Otta, several other mills in Ikorodu, Lagos state. Tinner Galasy steel mill in Umuaghala Obuzor in Abia State as his customers even after his premier customer Delta Steel Company folded up.
Businessday finding revealed that Nigeria has 13 rolling mills and 7 mills that depend on billets. Unfortunately they are threatened by the shortage of raw materials from Delta State Company. The total national long products rolling capacity is 3.18 million tonnes annually. Yet there is dearth of enough billets to satisfy this capacity.
The only inevitable alternative is, attention focused on the use of bars. This unarguably informed the wide scavenging of scrap wastes across the country by young energetic youths whom you can hardly identify as graduates.
Though Ogbu could not disclose from his fingertips the huge revenue government generates as tax from the scrap business but he disclosed with elation that, “the economic value to the dealers and the economy are as follows: employment has been created by the scrap business for over one million unemployed graduates in the country. For those who are not graduates or who is unskilled, employment has been created for over five million most who would have been robbers or miscreants in the society”.
More interestingly, both the federal and state governments have their regulatory Environmental protection policies and enforcement protection policies and enforcement but Ogbu noted that, “scavengers in the business are unofficially keeping the states and the nation at large clean by removing scrap materials from the streets and gutters and transporting them through dealers and agents to the steel mills which makes the business environment friendly”.
The south-south/south – East president of the scrap business council, Ogbu, also noted that the over six million persons engaged in the business nationwide pay taxes and levies to local state and federal governments thereby boosting the internally generated revenue (IGR) of the country, including payments by companies owned by dealers and agents, as well as the steel mills.
“Scrap dealers and agents are currently feeding steel mills located in places such as Rivers, Abia, Delta, Ogun and Anambra, Lagos states and federal capital territory (FCT) Abuja, but majority of the agents operate their companies as small/medium enterprises (SMES) but the union generally does not benefit or enjoy the federal government S.M.E initiative”, Ogbu said.
The union is contending with numerous challenges in the business like any other business(s). In terms of security, the challenges are internal and external. Internally, the union is challenged by certain individuals who do not want their business to be regulated or checked. Some of them are not willing to let the members of the task force at the point of loading and those located close to the steel mills to check their vehicles to ensure that they do not convey stolen property.
Some of these individuals engage illegal police and army escort who beat up task force members and assist them escape with their prohibited goods. Some of the steel mills also collude with some of these unscrupulous dealers by using the soldiers attached to the steel mills to assault the task force members and ensure that prohibited materials like stolen vehicles, oil pipelines, railway fish plates, railway tracks and armored cables are taken unto the mills and melted.
“External, the union grapples with cases of extortion by security personnel who sometimes assault drivers of trucks and dealers to forcibility extort money from them. We have written to the I.G of police and Chief of Staff (C.O.A.S) to deal with this issue on several occasions,”, Ogbu said.
In terms of community challenges, Ogbu laments further that, “our problems have been their unwillingness to sell bulk land to dealers to use as dump sites due principally to the misconceptions about business or the biased perception that the business is dirty”.
He also complained that challenges posed by local and state governments bother on multiple taxation as every agency on the local, state and Federal Government impose multiples taxes on dealers and set up enforcement teams along the roads to enforce these taxes to detriment of the union. The union is using dialogue to handle the issue and if need be, may resort to the courts for a prosper interpretation.
Credit and Photo: Business Day