In the wake of the 1973 oil-price quadrupling, Yakubu Gowon's federal government launched a continent-wide construction binge — barracks, ministries, the new federal capital surveys, the Third National Development Plan. Cement was the bottleneck input, and procurement was dispersed across ministries with no central tonnage cap. In 1974–75 the Federal Ministry of Defence (Gen. Iliya Bisalla) and other agencies issued contracts for an estimated 16 million tonnes of cement against a Lagos port capacity of roughly 1 million tonnes per year. Demurrage clauses had been written into the supply contracts on a take-or-pay basis: the federal government owed the foreign shippers whether or not the cement could be discharged.
By mid-1975, 455 ships were anchored off Apapa demanding about $4,100 per vessel per day in demurrage. The total fleet across the crisis exceeded 1,600 vessels — at one point larger than the merchant marine of several European states. The harbour became a floating warehouse: cement bagged in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, Spain and Greece bobbed at anchor for months, hardening in the holds. Ships eventually dumped consignments at sea to free up tonnage; the wrecks of cement-laden hulks became a navigation hazard off the Lagos bar.
The 29 July 1975 coup that replaced Gowon with Murtala Mohammed cited the cement contracts in its broadcast as Exhibit A of federal mismanagement. Murtala constituted the Federal Tribunal of Inquiry into the Cement Contracts under Justice Ayo Irikefe; the Tribunal reported in late 1975, documenting systematic over-ordering, kickbacks, and the suspension of Gen. Bisalla (later executed for the February 1976 Dimka coup that killed Murtala). The federal government continued paying demurrage and contract-cancellation penalties into the early 1980s. Documented direct losses ran to at least $2bn — at a time when Nigeria's total annual oil revenue was around $9bn — and the affair entered the language as shorthand for petro-state procurement failure. See the oil-boom record, the Udoji Award and FESTAC '77.