Forgotten Dairies
A mini estate in the middle of the bush lies somewhere in Nigeria’s Ogun State, inhabited by Israeli and Lebanese nationals exploiting a resource planted by God for Africans -By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu
It’s the same reason foreigners are mining iron ore and rubber in Liberia. The same reason the Chinese own the cobalt mines in Congo—especially now that cobalt has become ‘hot cake’ for makers of electric vehicles.
The estate, at the time I encountered its inhabitants years ago, was protected by Nigerian security forces. Its owners were workers at a quarry that had lasted years in an old town called Ogbere.
The entire landscape is a vast mass of rocks. Locals could not farm it, so several decades ago, I was told, some expatriates, through local contacts, offered to buy. It was ‘useless’ land anyway, so landlords were overjoyed to be paid N50m each at the time.
As true Africans, they went home making merry, marrying more wives. The expatriates had obtained appropriate licenses from the state and soon began to exploit.
They brought in their machines and manpower and housed them in the bush, in relative comfort. You require a set of crushers, worth over N2 billion now, to harness the rocks into granite, stone base, and other chippings. To know how profitable this particular quarry was, trucks waited day and night to be loaded different materials already paid for, every day of the week. The owners have recouped their investment a thousand times and counting.
I remember asking a stupid question at the time—the same question an African brother from the Congo asked last night as we discussed our continent: how come Nigerians did not exploit the rocks entirely by themselves?
It’s the same reason foreigners are mining iron ore and rubber in Liberia. The same reason the Chinese own the cobalt mines in Congo—especially now that cobalt has become ‘hot cake’ for makers of electric vehicles.
Africans complain daily that foreigners are exploring their continent. But Africans, in 2022, cannot process rubber into vehicle tyres. They cannot make EV batteries out of cobalt. They cannot produce crushers to blast rocks that God planted in their territory. They didn’t even know that oil lay beneath their feet until the White man came and “discovered” it. Still, Africans still can’t refine oil entirely by themselves without the help of the White man in 2022.
But at least we make great music.
Written by Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu
