Nigeria has opened a billion-dollar deep seaport in Lagos, which is anticipated to relieve congestion at the country’s ports and help it become an African transhipment hub, handling shipments in transit for other destinations.
Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, who unveiled the port on Monday, January 23, 2023, has made infrastructure development a fundamental pillar of his administration’s economic policy, hoping that it will help his ruling party win votes in next month’s presidential election.
Many of Nigeria’s seaports, which were left over from the British colonial rule, are no longer operational or are operating at less than capacity.
The majority of commercial activity currently passes via the two in Lagos and two others in and around Port Harcourt, the nation’s oil capital, creating in constant traffic and logistics challenges for imports and exports.
Local newspaper Punch reported Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu as saying that; “the size of vessels that will be coming here could be up to four times the size of vessels that currently berth at Tin Can and Apapa Ports (Lagos’s existing ports).”
The China Harbour Engineering Company and Singapore’s Tolaram Group own 75% of the new Lekki Deep Sea Port, with the other 25% held by the Lagos state government and the Nigerian Ports Authority.
Authorities have said the new port, built at a reported $1.5bn, is one of the largest in West Africa.
“This is a transformative project, game changer project. This project could create at least 200,000 jobs,” Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria Cui Jianchun told Reuters after the port was commissioned by Buhari.
China is one of Nigeria’s top bilateral lenders, funding rail, roads, and power plants.
Source: Aljazeera News