President Muhamnadu Buhari, on Monday, inaugurated the Lekki deep seaport and Imota rice mill projects in Lagos.
The deep seaport was completed in 2022, with a promise from the state government that commercial operations would commence in 2023.
The project, constructed by China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd (CHEC), occupies 90 hectares out of the entire 830 hectares of land reserved for the Lagos Free Zone (LFZ).
Situated in Lagos’ commercial centre, the deep seaport will allow 18,000 TEU capacity vessels, which are four times bigger than the ones berthing at Apapa seaports, thereby reducing the cost of container transportation from any part of the world.
On the other hand, the Imota project is a 32-metric-tonnes-per-hour rice mill built by the state to tackle food insecurity in the country.
With a capacity of 2.8 million bags of 50kg bags of rice yearly, the project is expected to generate 1,500 direct jobs; and 254,000 indirect jobs.