The Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, has commended the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) for its impressive performance under the leadership of the Managing Director, Abubakar Dantsoho.
Oyetola made the commendation at the 4th Quarter 2025 Citizens/Stakeholders’ Meeting in Abuja, with the theme: “Positioning Nigerian Marine and Blue Economy for Investment, Innovation and Expansion”.
He praised the NPA for effective and efficient operations, which has brought visible boom across the nation’s ports, especially since Dantsoho took over as the agency’s Managing Director.
While delivering a goodwill message, the NPA boss enumerated some of the achievements recorded by the agency in the 2025 fiscal year under his administration, attributing the feats to the Federal Government’s export-focused economic reforms, the policy direction of President Bola Tinubu, and the strategic leadership of the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Oyetola, noting that their combined interventions have strengthened efficiency and confidence across the maritime sector.
Dantsoho added that ongoing port modernisation initiatives championed by the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, the deployment of export processing terminals, and the expansion of digital platforms such as the electronic truck call-up system have helped reduce bottlenecks, improve turnaround time, and position Nigeria’s ports to play a more strategic role in regional and global trade.
He said that the Q3 performance underscored the growing contribution of the maritime sector to Nigeria’s non-oil export drive, as ports align more closely with the administration’s broader economic diversification and blue economy development agenda.
According to him, conontainer operations were a significant contributor to the improved performance. Total container traffic climbed by 18.9 per cent to 546,931 TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units) in Q3 2025, compared with 460,038 TEUs in Q3 2024.
Dantsoho noted further that within this, import-laden containers rose by 33.1 per cent to 268,713 TEUs, from 201,839 TEUs a year earlier, while export-laden containers surged to 69,039 TEUs, from just 5,812 TEUs in the same period of 2024.
“The sharp rise in export containers also led to a 21.5 per cent reduction in empty container traffic, signalling improved balance between imports and exports and stronger non-oil export activity.
“Ship traffic equally recorded notable growth during the quarter. The number of vessel calls increased by 8.4 per cent to 1,074 ships, from 991 vessels in Q3 2024. At the same time, the total Gross Registered Tonnage (GRT) jumped by 18 per cent to 42.64 million, compared with 36.13 million recorded a year earlier, indicating that Nigerian ports are increasingly handling larger vessels,” Dantsoho stated.
A breakdown of the number of ship calls along the port locations revealed that Tin Can Port topped the chart at 22.7 per cent, followed by Apapa Port at 22.2 per cent. Onne and Lekki Ports followed with 18.9 per cent and 18.4 per cent respectively, while Calabar Port contributed the least at 2.1 per cent.
