Benue investment company audits collapsed factories in revival push

The Benue Investment and Property Company has begun an audit of the state's collapsed industries as part of a plan to restart plants that have been idle for decades.

The company's group managing director, Raymond Asemakaha, set out the approach during an inspection of abandoned industrial assets in Benue South led by Deputy Governor Sam Ode. The team visited the Igumale cement factory in Ado Local Government Area and the Otukpo burnt bricks plant established in the 1980s. Asemakaha said the exercise was a root cause analysis, and attributed industrial decline in the state to policy inconsistency, the collapse of state-owned enterprises, weak private investment, poor infrastructure and broken value chains.

He listed Benue Brewery, Taraku Mills, Benro Packaging, Benue Bottling Company and Flour Mills Makurdi among the ventures now dead or dying, noting that the state's population had grown past seven million while industrial output moved the other way. Under the plan, the company would hold 35 per cent equity in revived firms while private investors lead operations. Work was ordered to resume at Igumale, where a Chinese partner's plant stalled in 2017.