Transport, Blue Economy Ministers Unveil Infrastructure Push At Summit

The curate of Transportation, Senator Sa’idu Ahmed Alkali, and his Marine and Blue Economy counterpart, Adegboyega Oyetola person reaffirmed the national government’s committedness to transforming the country’s transport and Marine sectors done monolithic infrastructure investment, manpower development, and argumentation reforms.

Speaking astatine the 2025 Nigeria Transport Sector Summit organised by the Transport Correspondents Association of Nigeria (TCAN) astatine Ikeja, Lagos, the Ministers some described the ongoing FG efforts arsenic “critical to unlocking the nation’s economical imaginable and driving inclusive growth.”
Speaking, the Transportation Minister, Alkali praised President Bola Tinubu for championing far-reaching transport reforms nether the Renewed Hope Agenda, saying the administration’s resoluteness is already reshaping Nigeria’s mobility landscape.

“The President has provided wide absorption and committedness to making nationalist proscription efficient, safe, integrated, and affordable. His administration’s policies are laying the instauration for a genuinely modern transport system,” Alkali said.

Alkali highlighted cardinal achievements, including the ongoing modernization of respective obstruction corridors. Among them is the Port Harcourt–Maiduguri obstruction line, wherever the Port Harcourt to Aba conception has been completed and operationalized.

The Kaduna–Kano and Kano–Maradi lines person besides seen accelerated progress, with execution levels present exceeding 50% and 60%, respectively—up from conscionable 5–15% astatine the commencement of the administration.

“At the gait we are going, the Kano–Maradi enactment volition scope Katsina by December 2025 and beryllium acceptable for afloat completion by March 2027,” the Minister disclosed.

In addition, Alkali revealed plans for a High-Speed Rail web connecting Lagos, Abuja, Kano, and Port Harcourt—a task helium said would redefine long-distance question successful Nigeria.

Also speaking, the curate of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, said the caller National Marine and Blue Economy Policy volition chopped logistics costs, boost commercialized competitiveness, and pull backstage assemblage concern into the transport and maritime sectors.

Oyetola, who was represented by the drector of Maritime Services Department of Federal of Marine & Blue Economy, Dr Mercy Ilori explained that the argumentation provides a model for seamless intermodal integration crossed road, rail, barge, and pipeline channels, aimed astatine transforming Nigeria into a logistics hub for West and Central Africa.

“By lowering the outgo of doing business, improving turnaround times, and creating an enabling situation for backstage capital, we are positioning Nigeria arsenic a preferred logistics destination successful Africa,” Oyetola said.

The curate highlighted cardinal interventions already underway, including the operationalisation of the Lagos–Ibadan Standard Gauge Rail enactment for larboard cargo evacuation, enlargement of barge operations astatine Lagos and Onne ports, completion of the Apapa–Oshodi Expressway, and the commissioning of the 27km Lekki Port Access Road.

He besides pointed to the improvement of inland adust ports successful Ibadan, Kaduna, Kano, and Funtua to easiness unit connected seaports and enactment determination economies.

Oyetola stressed that the occurrence of the reforms depends connected collaboration among shipping lines, terminal operators, freight forwarders, investors, and regulators, adding that Nigeria indispensable follow digital, green, and climate-resilient logistics solutions to stay competitory globally.

However, Transportation experts astatine the acme emphasised the important relation of innovation and sustainability successful driving the proscription manufacture forward.

The acme had the theme,’’Driving the Transport Logistics Value Chains for Economic Growth.’’

Earlier successful his invited remarks, TCAN Chairman, Tola Adenubi, warned that Nigeria’s transport assemblage remains dangerously unbalanced, with over-reliance connected roadworthy haulage leaving highways successful disrepair and citizens astatine risk.

He cited the “daily menace” of falling containers, persistent vessel mishaps connected inland waterways, and chronic neglect of barge operations contempt their imaginable to relieve roadworthy congestion and little costs.

“At 65, Nigeria is yet to person an acceptable protocol to usher the full transport system,” Adenubi lamented, urging authorities to enforce the 2023 Inland Waterways Transportation Code and put successful safer alternatives crossed obstruction and water.