KEY POINTS
- NPA cargo throughput jumped 24.8 percent to 129.3 million metric tons in 2025.
- Lekki Port handled 40.6 percent of all national cargo, leading every port.
- Transshipment containers surged 205.8 percent, cementing Nigeria’s regional hub status.
Nigeria moved more cargo through its ports in 2025 than at any other point in its history, and the numbers released this week by the Nigerian Ports Authority make that case without any ambiguity.
Total cargo throughput reached 129.3 million metric tons last year, the NPA said in its 2025 Operational Performance Report. That is up 24.8 percent from the 103.6 million metric tons recorded in 2024, marking the sharpest single-year jump the country’s maritime sector has logged in recent memory.
NPA Managing Director Abubakar Dantsoho called it exactly what it looks like. “One of the most significant annual increases in Nigeria’s maritime history,” he said, adding that the milestone positions the country as a stronger player in both regional and international trade.
Lekki Is Now Nigeria’s Undisputed Cargo Capital
Lekki Port accounted for 40.6 percent of total national cargo throughput in 2025, clearing Onne Port at 19.1 percent and Apapa Port at 16.7 percent by a wide margin. It also handled the biggest ships, pulling in vessels with an average Gross Registered Tonnage of 55,712, just ahead of Onne’s 53,022 GRT. Apapa and Tin Can Island averaged 33,251 GRT and 36,909 GRT respectively, while Delta Ports handled the smallest vessels at 17,414 GRT.
Tin Can Island Port, notably, logged the highest frequency of ship arrivals at 22.7 percent of total calls. But in the world of modern shipping, frequency matters less than tonnage. The ships calling at Lekki and Onne are bigger, heavier and more commercially significant, which is precisely what Nigeria needs if it wants to compete with established regional hubs.
Across all ports combined, ship calls rose nearly 12 percent to 4,477 vessels. Liquid bulk cargo, including fuel and chemicals, remained the dominant cargo type at 54.7 percent of total volumes. Containerized goods accounted for 24 percent.
Container Traffic and the Transshipment Surprise
Container activity told a particularly striking story in 2025. Total container traffic climbed 25.7 percent to more than 2.1 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units. Import-laden containers surged 32.8 percent. Export containers were up 3.1 percent, which, while modest, reflects a slow but real expansion in the kind of outward trade Nigeria has been trying to build for years.
But the headline number within containers was transshipment. Transshipment containers shot up 205.8 percent, a figure that is hard to dismiss as routine. It signals that Nigeria’s ports are increasingly being used by international shipping lines as a distribution point for goods headed elsewhere in West and Central Africa. That is the behavior of a regional logistics hub, not just a country managing its own imports.
Exports as a whole accounted for 39 percent of total cargo throughput in 2025, compared with 59.2 percent for inward traffic and 1.8 percent for transshipment. Analysts have pointed to the rising export share as evidence that the federal government’s economic diversification push, aimed at reducing reliance on crude oil, is gaining traction in the trade data.
Whether that momentum holds in 2026 depends partly on what comes next for port infrastructure. Dantsoho said the government-approved port modernization program and the planned rollout of the National Single Window system are designed to do exactly that, cutting cargo dwell times, improving vessel turnaround, and pulling more international shipping traffic toward Nigerian terminals.The numbers from 2025 give that case something to stand on.
