Confronted with the challenge of housing over 170 million people, various governments had through national development plans made frantic efforts towards ensuring adequate mass housing, especially in urban areas.
However, such efforts had not yielded the desired results, leaving the country with huge housing deficits estimated at over 17 million units. Also, the World Bank in 2016 projected that the country required about 700,000 housing units every year to curb this deficit.
According to the World Bank, it would cost the country about N59.5 trillion to address the housing deficits in the country as about 108 million Nigerians are estimated to be homeless, based on an average family of six people per housing unit.
It is in the light of this that the news of Ibeto cement ’s historic reverse merger with Century Petroleum Corporation, a United States of America publicly traded petroleum exploration and production company is heartwarming.
The merger bestrides two key sectors of the Nigerian economy: cement as well as petroleum. While the latter remains at the core of Nigeria’s economy, cement is also a key indicator of any economy.
As in Nigeria and Africa generally, African nations are at the low end of cement consumption relative to other emerging economies. With growing populations, it is predicted that consumption of cement in Sub-Saharan Africa will grow by an average of between 7% and 10% year on year over the next two decades.
The merger has also made Ibeto a global player in cement world production, which presents huge boost towards mitigating the nation’s housing problems. Speaking on this milestone, Dr. Cletus M. Ibeto, who had already taken over as Chairman of the Board of Directors, said: “this is in line with our collective dreams to place Nigeria in its rightful place in the comity of nations.
“Everybody knows that Ibeto Group has billions of dollar investments in Nigeria; but the time has come to replicate the successes we have enjoyed in Africa and globally. Century Petroleum Corporation is the vehicle for using our wealth of experience for the benefit of people within and beyond Africa,” he added.
Located in BunduAma, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Ibeto Cement Company Limited, began cement bagging operations at its bagging terminal in Port Harcourt in 2005. It is an ultra-modern bagging plant with a flat-storage capacity of 50,000 metric tonnes and a production capacity of 1,500,000 metric tonnes yearly, which translates to a production capacity of 4,000+ metric tonnes per day.
