President Muhammadu Buhari gave the $1.5 billion Lekki Deep Seaport in Lagos its formal commission on Monday.
The largest seaport in West Africa and state-of-the-art infrastructure will revolutionize how commodities are carried and exchanged in Nigeria, increasing connectivity and efficiency and acting as a key engine for economic growth in the area.
The largest container ship, the CMA-CGM, which is owned and operated by a French shipping company, berthed at the Lekki Deep Seaport prior to its commissioning.
The arrival of the ship was announced by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) on their official Twitter account. The NPA noted that this was evidence of their readiness to provide marine services for smooth port operations.
The Lekki Deep Seaport has an astonishing number of features, including an approach canal that is 11 km long and a main breakwater that is 1.5 km long with a turning circle of 600 meters, able to accommodate boats up to 16,000 standard containers. The container terminal, the liquid terminal, and the dry bulk terminal are the other three terminals at the port.
The container facility, which can accommodate 2.5 million twenty-foot standard containers annually, has an initial draft of 14 meters and has the capacity to be dredged further to 16.5 meters, according to Leadership.ng.
Additionally, it is the first port in Nigeria to have “Super-post-Panamax” cranes, or ship-to-shore cranes, that can access and unload the last row of containers even when the container ship is bigger than the Panama Canal (49m or 160ft maximum boat beam).
The computerized technology at the Lekki Deep Seaport enables container identification and clearance from the office, reducing the need for human interaction during actual operations.
The deep sea port will have three liquid berths when Phase 2 is finished. The liquid cargo terminal may develop to a capacity of 160,000 DWT and will accommodate ships up to 45,000 DWT (dead weight tonnage). The bulk terminal can accommodate a Panamax class vessel and has a 300 m long dock (75,000 DWT).
Source: Business Insider Africa
