Lawmakers sitting in the House of Representatives yesterday, shut down a motion designed to aid the business of Alhaji Aliko Dangote. There was uproar in the House as it seemed the leadership of the House was in favour of the unpopular motion.
While majority of the lawmakers shouted “Nay!” to the motion, the Deputy Speaker dithered and asked the sponsor to repeat the prayer just in case members did not hear it well in the first instance.
Hassan Saleh (PDP, Borno) had sought to bring a motion entitled, “urgent need to investigate the non-implementation of the Backward Integration Policy on Local Production of Cement,” before the House of Representatives yesterday.
The motion was unanimously defeated by fellow lawmakers in a voice vote.
The motion, if adopted would have been a key victory for Alhaji Aliko Dangote, one of the world’s largest manufacturer’s of cement. Certain analysts are of the opinion that he lobbied to have the motion introduced on the floor.
The motion was designed to bring the attention of the Chamber to the fact that the FG was yet to vigorously pursue and implement the provision of the cement backward integration policy, which was initiated to encourage and protect local manufacturers from the dumping of cement products into the country through importation.
According to Saleh, the development had caused Dangote to shut down his Gboko Cement factory in Benue, and ask his workers to proceed on temporary leave pending an improvement of the situation.
Leave a Reply