Badagry Deep Seaport: What Other Nigerian Governors Must Learn From Lagos State

Lagos State is building another seaport in Badagry. This will make the Seaports to three – Apapa, Lekki, and Badagry.

The $2 billion Lekki deep sea port will be ready by December this year, so this Badagry seaport will be the third seaport in this city when completed.

The Lagos state government, is not dropping any money for the project, but a group of foreign investors have come together to finance the project with their own funds.

These investors are expected to spend $2.5 billion of their own funds to bring this project into reality. After spending the money, the seaport will be implemented under a Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) concession structure for 45 years so these investors will manage the Badagry port for 45 years so as to recover there investment.

At the end of the 45 years, the investors will hand over the port to Nigerian government as it is believed they would have recover their money by then.

During the 45-year concession period, the project is estimated to generate USD54 billion of revenue, create about 250,000 jobs, and attract an immense amount of foreign direct investment into the various support services required to build, operate, and maintain the port.

The same Lagos state will soon start building another airport in Lekki. The new Lekki International Airport will be the hub for new Lagos Airline that will now compete with Emirates and BA.

As we all know, Lagos State is the commercial hub of Nigeria and the sub-region. It has been ranked as the 5th largest economy in Africa and the fastest growing city in the world in terms of economy and population. For proper context, the Lagos economy is bigger than Ghana and Togo combined.

In the next 10 years, when all these infrastructure projects come on board, Lagos will likely go up to the 3rd largest economy in Africa after Nigeria and South Africa.

If we have five states like Lagos, maybe Nigeria would have been a developed country by now. I just hope many other Governors will learn from this and focus on what they have comparative advantage on.

Daily News Reporters