Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum has held strategic talks with the management of the Nigerian Ports Authority in Lagos as part of an intensifying effort to integrate the state’s agricultural and manufacturing producers into Nigeria’s maritime trade network, arguing that expanding access to port infrastructure was essential to transforming Borno’s economy from aid-dependence and subsistence agriculture into a genuine hub for export-driven trade and investment.
At the meeting, Zulum made the case to NPA Managing Director Abubakar Dantsoho and his team that unlocking maritime export pathways for North-East businesses was not merely a regional logistics matter but a strategic national imperative for an economy that had been battered by insurgency, infrastructure deficit, and excessive dependence on federal allocations for over a decade.
Central to his export vision is the long-delayed Maiduguri Dry Inland Port project, which Zulum has consistently championed as the most practical mechanism for bringing shipping and cargo services within accessible reach of landlocked northern producers. Once operational, the facility is expected to dramatically reduce transportation costs, ease congestion at coastal ports, and open export channels for goods produced across the North-East, while generating thousands of jobs and boosting internally generated revenue.
Zulum is also advancing a Free Trade Zone initiative in Banki, a strategic border town near Cameroon, which is intended to serve as a gateway for regional commerce and position Borno as a critical node in West and Central African trade corridors under the African Continental Free Trade Area framework. The twin projects, the Maiduguri Dry Inland Port and the Banki Free Trade Zone, represent what officials described as a coordinated blueprint for long-term economic resilience in a state still rebuilding from years of conflict.
