Nigeria’s Ogun State Government is making progress on several transport schemes including the Kajola Inland Container Terminal, the Ogun Agro-Cargo International airport and the Olokola deep seaport.

In late April, state governor Dapo Abiodun said work would soon begin on the dry port at Kajola in the southwest. It will be located near the standard-gauge and narrow-gauge rail lines that run to Apapa in Lagos state, enabling cargo to be moved easily via rail to and from the port complex.

"We will soon be flagging off the Kajola [terminal] and this we are particularly determined to see through because we understand the plight of most of you [and] what you have to go through by importing your raw materials into Tin Can or Apapa [ports] and incurring unnecessary expenses in demurrage before bringing them by road, struggling through the bottleneck and the traffic out of Lagos,” Abiodun told investors at a breakfast meeting held as part of the 13th Gateway International Trade Fair held in Ogun state.

The inland container terminal will also include residential, commercial and industrial developments.

The Kajola terminal is part of Ogun state’s multimodal transportation masterplan, which aims to maximise the state's economic potential by offering safe, reliable and affordable means of transportation including rail, road, water and air.

Another component of this masterplan is the Ogun Agro-Cargo International airport, also known as the Gateway International Airport, which was constructed by the local Craneburg Construction in the Iperu area.

Abiodun said in late April that the airport will begin scheduled and non-scheduled flights in the next few weeks.

During his recent visit to Ogun State, Vice President @KashimSM (GCON) and other dignitaries lauded our significant progress in propelling the construction of the Gateway International Agro-Cargo Airport. We are nearing completion of securing the required approvals for both… 

The project involved the engineering, design and construction of a 3.4km runway, apron, passenger terminal, control tower, taxiway and ancillary facilities. Lebanon’s Dar al-Handasah carried out the design work.

The airport is part of an aerotropolis or airport city, which will include the US$800m Ogun State Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zone (SAPZ). The freezone is being executed in phases across 10,000 hectares by Arena Integrated Company.

The state government signed a public-private partnership development agreement in November 2022 with the African Finance Corporation-backed ARISE Integrated Industrial Platforms (AIIP) for the US$400 million first phase of the SAPZ, the Remo Economic Industrial Cluster. The special-purpose vehicle for the project is Industrial Platform Remo.

Spread across more than 5,000 hectares, the cluster will include storage and logistics solutions, a single-window clearance centre, commercial and residential areas, a truck park and an African quality assurance centre (AQAC) by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank). It will also include non-agro-processing industries such as pharmaceuticals and construction materials, as well as light manufacturing industries and technology and renewable energy enterprises.

The Remo cluster is being constructed in phases, with phase one covering 549 hectares. The aim is to attract an estimated US$1 billion in foreign direct investment for phase one.

The Ogun state’s transportation masterplan also includes the construction of a deep seaport. In late January, the state government announced plans to collaborate with the Organised Private Sector (OPS) and sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the construction of the Olokola deep seaport in the Ogun Waterside area.

The Olokola port is expected to include a main port and general cargo terminal, a container and roll-on/roll-off terminal, a liquid products facility and a dry bulk port.