Lost history · 1954 to present
No matching image yet, so this page uses a plain title card instead of a photo.
Nigeria's cement business started in a quiet Ebonyi town in 1957. The factory had its own schools, banks and hospital. It hasn't made a bag since about 2000.
Cement is big business in Nigeria today. It started in Nkalagu, a town in Ishielu, Ebonyi State, that you pass on the way in from Enugu. Nkalagu is the first stop on the Enugu-Abakaliki road into the state, and its big market, Nkwo Nkalagu, sits right beside the highway.
Chika Nwoba, who is from the host community, told the story to Within Nigeria in 2025. In 1954, he said, during colonial rule, limestone was found under four communities: Nkalagu, Nkalaha, Amaezu and Umuhuali. Three years later, in 1957, the Nigerian Cement Company was set up there. Everyone called it Nigercem. It was owned by the Eastern Regional government and the federal government, and Within Nigeria describes it as the first cement company in Nigeria and in the whole West African sub-region.
There's a small unfairness in the name. Nwoba said Nkalagu only has a small share of the limestone, yet the company was named after it. Its product was known everywhere as Nkalagu cement.
Nigercem was more than a factory. Nwoba listed what was inside the gates: banks, primary and secondary schools, a hospital, a park, places to relax, restaurants, a market and staff housing. "It was a full-blown community," he said, so workers didn't need to go outside for anything. Charles Soludo, now governor of Anambra State, was born and raised there.
Ebonyi's Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, Oguzor Offia Nwali, said almost everybody's father or grandfather had worked at Nigercem, and that many people's school fees were paid out of its wages.
The factory had already been through hard times once. It was badly damaged and then repaired by the old East Central State government decades ago. But the collapse that finished it came around 2000. That was about the last time it produced cement for sale, and nothing has come out of it since.
Nobody gives just one reason. Within Nigeria points to bad management and neglect by the five South East states that all claimed a share of it. They also failed to find investors with the skill to run it. Nwoba put it more directly. The company couldn't pay its workers or meet the demands of its host communities. There were protests and counter-protests, and in the end it closed. Thousands of workers lost their jobs.
Then came privatisation. In 1999 the federal government put Nigercem on the first list of companies the Bureau of Public Enterprises would sell. Eastern Bulkcem Limited was the only bidder, and it won, even though bigger international cement firms were around. The report says it paid for the company's assets but not its debts. Thousands of former staff were let go, and their unpaid salaries were never settled.
Eastern Bulkcem said it couldn't take full control until it got all the share certificates, which it needed to borrow from the banks. Critics said that was backwards. The privatisation rules were meant to pick a buyer who already had the skills and the money.
Nwoba said Eastern Bulkcem later handed control to the Ibeto Group in a way he called "unconventional", and that went to court. the then governor, Elechi, wouldn't let Ibeto onto the site while the case was going on.
In 2016, under Governor David Umahi, the four host communities, the state government and Ibeto signed a deal at the International Conference Centre in Abakaliki. The court case was dropped. According to Nwoba, Chief Cletus Ibeto asked the state for a flyover at Nkalagu Junction, the road from the Enugu border to the junction, feeder roads, security and water, and the government provided them. But no rebuilding started. Nwoba said it later became clear Ibeto didn't have the money. The machines, buildings and connections it needed would cost billions of dollars.
Meanwhile thieves started taking the machines and metal, and soldiers were posted to guard what was left. By 2025, Within Nigeria said, the plant had become home to snakes, rats and other reptiles.
People keep promising to bring it back. Umahi, by then Minister of Works, told the current governor, Francis Nwifuru, that it shouldn't stay dead. He noted that neither he nor Elechi had managed it in eight years each. The commissioner complained that federal licences kept being renewed for operators who couldn't do the job. He also said the limestone could last more than a hundred years. Nwoba believes a working plant could employ at least 10,000 people. For now, the first cement factory in the country makes nothing.
