On Jan 21, Nigeria’s BUA Cement announced that it would construct in Sokoto State, in Nigeria’s far northwest, a $240 million cement plant with an annual output of 3 million tons. Sokoto, which borders Niger to the north, was the target of Trump’s “Christmas gift” anti-terror missile strike on Dec. 25, 2025.
The new plant is to be built by China’s CBMI, a company which has built numerous cement plants around the world, including several for BUA in Nigeria. Power for the plant is expected to come from the newly completed (but not yet functional) LNG plant in Kogi State. In its announcement, BUA takes note of Sokoto’s strategic location, “providing easy access to several landlocked neighboring countries.” The only country fitting this description is Niger, a member of the “rogue” Alliance of Sahel States (AES).
Large as it is, the BUA conglomerate (cement, sugar, construction, founded by Abdul Samad Rabiu), comes in a distant second to Nigeria’s number-one productive firm, Dangote Industries, Ltd.
