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This was revealed during a high-level engagement between the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), held at the NPA headquarters in Lagos on Monday.

Speaking at the meeting, President of DIL, Aliko Dangote, disclosed that Nigeria was on track to become a major player in global fertiliser exports, with the potential to export up to 16,000 tonnes daily.

“When you talk about 16,000 tonnes of fertiliser, it’s actually about $6.5 million to $7 million in revenue daily. This operation will make us the single largest contributor to Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings,” Dangote stated.

He noted that the fertiliser export was part of DIL’s larger strategy to deepen Nigeria’s Marine and Blue Economy sector. With operations scaling up at the Lekki Port, Dangote said the group expects to load eight fertiliser vessels annually, an unprecedented feat in the country.

“This is an operation that has never been seen in Nigeria. But with the leadership of the NPA, we are confident the logistics and port services needed for these volumes will be delivered,” he said.

Dangote also revealed that the company is preparing to expand its export portfolio beyond fertiliser to include cement, coal, polypropylene, and refined petroleum products, with a combined target of over 600 ships annually for various exports.

Aliko Dangote explained that efforts are on to expand export products outside Nigeria.

“We will soon be massively expanding our export operations. For some of you that have been to our cement factory in Itori, we’re already exporting cement out of Nigeria. We have a whole factory of six million tonnes for cement export.

“In the next couple of weeks, we will start exporting coal out of Nigeria. Our fertiliser export will be almost like eight cargoes. The refinery operations will not export less than 25 million tonnes of various products. We will also be exporting almost 600,000 to 700,000 metric tonnes of polypropylene. So when you are talking about exports, we are going to be very big,” he said.

In response, NPA Managing Director Dr. Abubakar Dantsoho reaffirmed the Authority’s commitment to supporting large-scale export operations.

He also announced that the NPA had achieved 95 per cent readiness on the Port Community System and received federal government approval for the National Single Window, both key enablers of export efficiency.

He added that the success of new policies like the “Naira for Crude” initiative is already being felt, with the NPA now handling over 57 vessels monthly, surpassing initial projections.

On the development of new ports, Abubakar Dantsoho stated, “There are two ways you can handle capacity improvement/expansion or deepen port capacity. You can do it on a brownfield, which is when you renovate or rehabilitate existing ports, or on a greenfield, which is building new ports.

“The last time the government built a new port in Nigeria was 1977, which was Tin-Can Island Port. There is already an approval for the port modernisation of both Tin-Can and Apapa ports. We are hopefully looking, at maybe the third quarter of this year to commence construction. That is on the brownfield.

“On the greenfield part, as I said earlier, we have deep-seaport development projects that have already been approved by the Federal Executive Council. We have Ibom Port, Bakassi, Olokola, Ondo Port, and Badagry in Lagos.

“These are new ports that the government is concerned about. Very soon, we’ll begin to see that these ports will become a reality,” the NPA MD stated.