Gowon ran the first oil-boom federal government, and produced two of its iconic policy disasters: the 1974 cement contracts that became known as the Cement Armada, and the 1972 (with 1977 amendment) Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree, the so-called Indigenisation Decree.
## Cement Armada (1974–75)
In early 1974 the Federal Ministry of Defence — flush with oil money and rebuilding from the civil war — issued cement contracts totalling roughly 16 million tonnes to be delivered to Lagos by mid-1975. The country's annual cement consumption at the time was around 1 million tonnes; Lagos port could discharge perhaps 1 million tonnes a year of bagged cement.
The predictable result: by August 1975, 455 ships were anchored off Lagos waiting to discharge. Demurrage payments ran to around $250,000 per day at peak. Cement caked in the holds, ships ballasted with cement were scuttled in Lagos lagoon, and contractors who had front-loaded payments simply walked away. The Murtala regime that took power in July 1975 cancelled the bulk of the outstanding contracts as one of its first acts. See Cement Armada.
The reversal was complete (the contracts were void) but the rent had already been extracted. The Cement Armada is one of the largest single instances of public-money disappearance in Nigerian history.
## Indigenisation (1972 / 1977)
The Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree 1972, amended 1977, listed scheduled sectors that were reserved either entirely (Schedule I) or partly (Schedule II) for Nigerian ownership. The economic logic was the post-civil-war nationalist project: small foreign-owned businesses (Lebanese groceries, Indian textile traders, British family firms) were expelled or compelled to sell to Nigerian partners at administered prices. The major multinationals (Shell, UAC, Cadbury) were diluted to 40-60% Nigerian holding.
## The harm before partial reversal
The Indigenisation Decrees handed swathes of the productive economy to a politically connected Nigerian middle class that, with notable exceptions, treated the acquired assets as rent rather than as a manufacturing project. Cadbury, UAC, Lever Brothers, John Holt, the trading conglomerates — all entered a long managerial drift. Foreign direct investment fell sharply for two decades.
## The partial reversal
The 1989 Nigerian Enterprises Promotion (Amendment) Decree under Babangida dismantled most of the schedules and opened the economy to majority foreign ownership in almost every sector. The 1995 Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission Decree completed the dismantling. The reversal was technocratic — debt crisis, SAP, IMF conditionality — not protest-driven.
## What stayed reversed and what didn't
Foreign ownership rules were reversed; the political-economy habit of using federal procurement (Cement Armada) and statutory protection (Indigenisation) to manufacture overnight Nigerian fortunes was not reversed — it just changed instruments, becoming the Cement Cartel & Dangote and the F.O.O.D regime of the Fourth Republic.