The global economy needs natural resources of gas, minerals and so also the manufacturing sector that needs freight transportation services to haul their good to the market. The project will freight natural resources distribution from the sources and provide efficient, cheap logistics networking beyond Nigeria borders. Supplying gas to the whole of Sub-Sahara Africa market as an alternative source of energy for cooking and heating their homes instead of current practices of firewoods which is drastically destroying our environment through trade integration.
In Nigeria for example over 91 million homes used firewood and enough of trees are not being planted to recover what is being lost. With projected population of 410 million people within the next 10 years ( thereby becoming third largest nation in population) given the daily birthrate of 26,450 daily. (UNICEF) that’s about 9.450 million people being added to our population annually.
Geographic boundaries will put a check to that growth. Without trade freight integration strategy in place its going to be a serious disaster not only for Nigeria, but the whole of humanity due to huge unemployment and environmental degradation going on now.
Different sources reported the Federal Government lost $1.2 billion dollars to gas flaring and another source estimated $16tn of gas is flared in the last 10 years, according to report obtained from the PUNCH on Monday. The Energy Institute’s 72nd edition of the ‘Statistical Review of World Energy 2023’ said the amount was lost from 2012 to 2022.
PwC also reported Nigeria agriculture sector loss average of $10 billion dollars due to poor transport infranstructure, while Lagos Chamber of Commerce released report that the nation is losing over $15 billion USD annually due to port bottlenecks.
Therefore the potential this project offers is huge, it includes Seimens Mobility establishing a state of the art locomotive manufacturing plant and SMS Group establishing a supercluster metallurgical complex to produce Mercedes Benz, BMW, Volkswagen part and achieve 80% ” *Made in Nigeria”* vehicles through a technical collaboration with Germans and US companies for other Sub-Sahara Africa countries market by 2028. It is a game changer for Africa.
