The director-general of the National Metallurgical Development Centre (NMDC), Jos, Plateau State, Prof. Linus Asuquo, has disclosed that the agency has formed alliances with other organisations to promote its activities in line with Executive Order 005 of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
Speaking to journalists in Abuja, he maintained the agency has been able to pitch its services to some government ministries, departments and agencies in line with the executive order in promoting local content to curb capital flight.
According to him, NMDC is strictly following Executive Order 5 of the President by collaborating with other agencies using its local content which they started with DICON which wants to use its local materials to produce their armament and ammunition.
“On December 1, 2020, [enter into a] collaboration with Defense Intelligence Corporation of Nigeria (DICON) they were importing their armament and ammunition from China, and I wrote to them that we can produce what they want. Instead of importing brass from China, we could produce.
“The director-general visited us twice with his team and was marvelled by what we were doing. He sent a technical team to us to evaluate and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on December 12, 2020, to produce the raw materials for them. If such is implemented, I can tell you I may not need money from the government because if the billions of naira they were using to import is given to us it would be sufficient for our research and development,” he said.
Asuquo stated that NMDC has two electric earth furnaces of 500kv which would be used in melting these metals and producing steel which can be used as raw materials for that.
The NMDC boss further said that it has also gone into collaboration with the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), stating the NASENI executive vice-chairman came himself with his team. He added that the agency has also written and also working with Czechoslovakia for meaningful research in the area of steel development.
