Nigeria accounted for 46 percent of port calls in the Gulf of Guinea in 2025, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) said on Friday.
Dayo Mobereola, director general of NIMASA, told this to stakeholders at a meeting in Lagos to mark World Maritime Day while listing the agency’s contributions in the past year.
Port calls are recorded when a vessel arrives at a port to load or discharge cargo, bunker, or carry out other port-related activities. In 2025, 4,477 vessels called at Nigerian seaports, according to Nigerian Ports Authority records.
The Gulf of Guinea, which comprises 20 commercial seaports, accounts for 25 percent of maritime traffic in Africa. The region offers access to Europe, the South and North American continents and is the primary access route to and from Nigeria and Angola, Africa’s first and second largest oil producers.
The figures stirs optimism for Nigeria’s maritime industry players. Investors are calling it an opportunity to scale.
“It shows you how big and significant we are,” Aminu Umar, president of the Nigerian Chamber of Shipping, told BusinessDay. “It means that we already are at an advantageous position, which makes it easy for us to scale.”
Umar, whose company operates its own ships, said Nigeria’s domestic market has created enormous demand that the country can ride to become a regional maritime authority.
“What we need is to make our ports a perfect environment for becoming the hub for the rest of the nations because we already have the significant volume. So it’s easy for us to scale to have them come here, and from here go to the other nations.”
Cargo throughput at Nigeria’s ports in 2025 rose to 129.3 million metric tonnes from 103.6 million metric tonnes in 2024. Ivory Coast, the second-highest in the region, recorded 54.37 million.
However, Nigeria’s busiest ports, built for its colonial-era trade needs, have struggled to meet the current appetite of global trade. As ships got bigger, ports got deeper and modernised to accommodate them, but Nigeria has not caught up. Upgrades to its major ports have stalled for decades, conceding regional and transhipment authority to neighbours.
“Our cargoes, as well as those of other countries, have to be transshipped through other locations, such as Morocco, Las Palmas, Egypt or Fujairah. If we develop the infrastructure to accommodate larger vessels, they can come here, discharge cargoes destined for the Gulf of Guinea, and then distribute them to other countries,” Umar said.
“If we create a place or an environment by investing in our new infrastructure, creating deep seaports, then we can accommodate bigger vessels,” he added.
The federal government plans to build deep seaports across the nation’s coastline states to strengthen its maritime capacity.
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Currently, the Lekki port in Lagos is Nigeria’s only deep seaport. In 2025, the port received the largest ships on average, with a Gross Registered Tonnage (GRT) of 55,712. It had the only record of transshipment among Nigeria’s ports in the first half of 2026.
“The other ones which may be deeper will come. And from there, it will open up Nigeria as a major hub for cargoes,” Umar said.
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Bethel Olujobi is the Trade Correspondent at BusinessDay. He brings scarce insight into Nigeria's maritime policies and the changing currents of global commerce defining the country's position in international trade. Before this, he reported on foreign relations, migration and sports for BusinessDay. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Mass Communication, and is an alumni of the CNN Academy and the Financial Times News School. He is certified by Reuters and Google. He is based in Lagos, Nigeria. For pitches, email: [email protected]
