BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Savannah Sugar Company Limited (SCCL) was incorporated in 1971 and commenced operation in 1980. The firm is located Lamorde Local Government Area of Adamawa State. The company's premises consisted of an administrative unit, factory unit, workshop and residential houses. The equipment was of premium grade with a designed capacity of 100, 000 metric tonnes of sugar per annum. The company owned over 30,000 hectares of land out of which12,000 hectares was arable. As it was with most State-owned Enterprises, Savannah Sugar Company Limited with time had become moribund and in dire need of revamping. Consequently, it became necessary to sell the company to private to run and manage. The National Council on Privatisation (NCP) approved the conversion of the company's N2 billion debts owed to the Federal Government to equity, thus increasing FGN shareholding from 79.47 to 97.7%. The NCP/BPE decided to divest FGN’s holding in Savannah Sugar Company Limited via Core Investor Sale strategy. After the technical evaluation of the Expression of Interest (EOI), two firms namely, Dangote Industries Limited (DIL) and BHI Holdings Limited, were pre-qualified for the core investors sale of to proceed to the financial stage. The bidders were required to submit bid bonds of U$1.5 million each from reputable banks to the BPE at the deadline of Thursday, November 28, 2002, only Dangote Industries Limited provided its bid bond. This situation automatically made DIL the sole bidder.
The BPE privatised 95% holdings of SSCL to DIL at the consideration fee of N1.35 billion handed over to the company to the DIL in year 2003.
