Last month, the Nigerian government confirmed plans to spend $1 billion on the modernization of the Apapa and Tin Can Island ports in Lagos, the country’s commercial nerve center. The announcement, made by Marine & Blue Economy Minister Adegboyega Oyetola at the 2025 Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) Conference, is said to be a “watershed moment” for a nation desperate to rescue its ports from decades of dysfunction.
Represented at the conference by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) Managing Director Abubakar Dantsoho, Oyetola said the project is “a landmark initiative designed to upgrade infrastructure, improve cargo handling, and expand capacity to meet global standards.” The minister added that the goal is a fully digital, paperless port system that reduces turnaround time, curbs corruption, and cuts through the bureaucratic fog that has defined Nigeria’s maritime sector for decades.
The stakes are enormous. For years, Lagos’s twin ports have symbolized the worst of Nigeria’s infrastructure problem because of endless truck queues, corruption-riddled processes, erratic scanners, dilapidated terminals, and capacity constraints that push importers to neighboring countries. Despite handling over two million TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units) in 2021, Lagos still trails some of the region’s ports, including Lome, with a deep-water capacity that allows it to attract ultra-large vessels that Lagos cannot berth.
Oyetola insists Nigeria must reclaim its position as West Africa’s maritime leader. The NPA, buoyed by early improvements in seaport efficiency, has set an ambitious ₦1.28 trillion revenue target for 2025, a 40 percent increase from the previous year. NPA data shows that improved port operations helped drive a 19.6 percent rise in non-oil exports in the first half of 2025.
Yet, the problem remains that Africa’s biggest democracy, while ambitious, always falters at execution.
Chagoury, Contract and Controversy. Even before construction begins, the modernization project is courting controversy. According to reporting by Africa Intelligence, a $700 million contract was awarded to ITB Nigeria, a subsidiary of the Chagoury Group, despite the company’s limited experience in port development. Billionaire Gilbert Chagoury, whose business empire includes the construction of Eko Atlantic and one of Nigeria’s most expensive road projects, the Lagos-Calabar highway, maintains longstanding ties to President Bola Tinubu.
The award raises questions about procurement transparency, especially in a sector where politically connected firms often win large contracts that later stall or collapse. Critics warn that this project risks following the old script of flashy announcements, partial groundbreaking, then silence. Nigeria has more than 56,000 abandoned projects scattered across the country, a warning sign for what might lie in wait for this.
Financing adds another layer of complexity. Terminal operator APM Terminals, a subsidiary of global shipping giant Maersk, has proposed investing $500 million in the modernization plan. But critics argue that concentrating responsibility among a small group of politically linked or concession-holding companies limits competition and accountability.
And yet the pressure to deliver is rising. A new trade corridor, a shipping line between Russia’s Novorossiysk and Lagos, was expected to launch in mid-2025, managed by A7 African Cargo Line. If Lagos cannot handle the increased traffic efficiently, cargo may be diverted permanently to rival ports.
Industry insiders echo the urgency. Bem Ibrahim Garba, founder/CEO of GOG Marine, speaking at The Nigerian Maritime Conference by BusinessDay, said: “Digitalisation is one of the biggest challenges. We need to find a way to digitalise all our processes.” The government plans to deploy a Port Community System (PCS) by Q1 2026, alongside e-Tag verification, joint boarding apps, and improvements to the Eto electronic call-up system.
Still, timelines remain uncertain, and experts say vague timelines are the hallmark of many of Nigeria’s failed infrastructure projects. As one maritime economist put it, even the most advanced digital tools can become “an expensive ornament on a fundamentally dysfunctional operation.”
A Regional Race Nigeria Can’t Afford to Lose. The window for Nigeria to assert maritime dominance is narrowing. Ghana’s Tema port has undergone “Port Expansion 2.0,” with Phases 1 and 2 commissioned by President John Dramani Mahama this November. This expansion will raise the capacity of the port from 2.5 million TEU to an estimated 3.5-3.7 million TEU.
Abidjan’s Port Authority is also expanding its second container terminal, with import-export traffic projected to increase by 50% by the end of this year. The port can already handle ultra-large container ships up to 7,000 TEU.
Even smaller competitors are making moves. Togo’s Port of Lomé reported cargo throughput of 30.64 million tonnes in 2024, up from 30.09 million tonnes in 2023, demonstrating consistent growth despite regional competition.
The Lekki Deep Sea Port, which began operations in 2023, offers some hope. Designed with a handling capacity of 1.2 million TEU, scalable up to 6 million TEU in subsequent phases, Lekki handled approximately 400,000 TEU in 2024, around 25% of Nigeria’s total container traffic.
Speaking at a Lagos business forum in August 2025, Oyetola hailed Lekki’s performance: “For the first time in decades, a major Nigerian port is not trapped behind logistical bottlenecks. Cargo now moves out faster, investors move in with confidence, and trade flows without unnecessary delay.” He argued that the Lekki model can be replicated nationwide.
But Apapa and Tin Can remain the dominant gateways for Nigerian trade, and their persistent inefficiency continues to undermine national ambitions. For landlocked neighbors such as Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, shipping calculations are shifting. High costs and delays at Lagos increasingly push cargo toward Lomé or Tema, weakening Nigeria’s regional influence.
For many analysts, this project is a test of whether the Nigerian government can align its ambition of growing the economy with discipline.
Concerns about regional imbalance have also surfaced. Nigeria’s president was once a Governor of Lagos State, and many point to this investment as his reward for his base. Energy economy analyst Kelvin Emmanuel, CEO of Dairy Hills, criticized the heavy focus on Lagos while other ports stagnate. In a post on X, Emmanuel noted that the government has not met its $900 million counterpart funding obligation for the Ibom Deep Sea Port, a port promoted by the Akwa Ibom State Government, nor has the federal government reviewed its equity stake, yet it can commit $1 billion to Lagos.
Opposition leader Peter Obi echoed this sentiment, saying Nigeria’s infrastructure investment remains “excessively concentrated in Lagos, often at the expense of strategic ports such as Warri, Port Harcourt, Calabar, and Onne.”
The Marine & Blue Economy Ministry disputes this. Spokesman Bolaji Akinola said procurement for upgrades in Warri, Port Harcourt, Calabar, and Onne is underway, emphasizing the intention to support “food security, economic diversification, and regional prosperity.”
Yet critical questions remain unanswered. Large-scale dredging and terminal expansion could profoundly affect local communities. Although no public Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been released yet, environmental experts warn that projects like this pose serious risks of erosion, disruption to fisheries, increased salinity in water, and even possible displacement of residents.
Community groups around Apapa and Tin Can report a lack of transparent engagement. Many recall past projects where promises of consultation and compensation fell short. For the modernization plan to succeed, experts argue, robust community engagement and environmental mitigation must be prioritized, including formal compensation frameworks, pollution control measures, and ongoing dialogue with affected residents.
Security Success, Infrastructure Uncertainty. One bright spot is maritime security. Oyetola highlighted the success of the Deep Blue Project, noting that Nigeria has recorded zero piracy incidents in its waterways for the last three years, a remarkable achievement in a region once known as the world’s piracy hotspot.
But infrastructure is a different, more complicated challenge. Unlike security, port reform touches multiple agencies, vested interests, and entrenched operational bottlenecks. It is here that projects most often falter.
The government’s ambition is clear, but the path is still littered with familiar red flags, procurement opacity, politically connected contractors, vague timelines, weak community processes, and Nigeria’s long history of poorly executed megaprojects.
For Nigeria, the question confronting Lagos’s port modernization is not whether the country needs it: it does, desperately. Nor is it whether the resources exist: they do, through a mix of public spending and private financing. The real question is whether Nigeria can finally break the cycle of groundbreaking ceremonies that only lead to silence and sometimes an anti-graft agency investigation.
With West African rivals investing in the expansion of their ports, every delayed vessel, every chaotic truck queue, every inefficiency strengthens the hand of competitors who are more than ready to absorb the cargo Nigeria loses.
The next 12 to 18 months will define the future of Nigeria’s maritime economy. If the government delivers, Lagos could reemerge as West Africa’s uncontested maritime hub. If it falters, this modernization project will join thousands of others on Nigeria’s growing list of ambitious but unfinished dreams, and the region will move on without waiting.
