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Lekki Port Corridor Gridlock Threatens Cargo Evacuation as Truckers Shun Parks

By
Yemisi Lanre-Idowu
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Truckers Shun Parks

Cargo moving out of Lagos is facing a fresh bottleneck.

Gridlock along the Lekki port corridor is threatening the evacuation of goods, after truckers began shunting designated parking parks, the Guardian reported on Friday morning.

The congestion affects the corridor serving the Lekki Deep Seaport and the adjacent road network linked to the Dangote Refinery area — two of the highest-value logistics routes in the country.

What is happening

When haulage operators refuse the parks, trucks spill onto the expressway. Container flows slow, delivery windows slip, and the cost is passed down the chain to importers and, eventually, consumers.

The Lekki-Epe axis has been strained for some time by a combination of rapid port growth, insufficient truck parking and traffic management that has not kept pace with volume.

Stakeholders agree on corrective measures

Operators and stakeholders working within the Lekki Deep Seaport corridor have since agreed a series of measures aimed at clearing the persistent congestion, The Nation reported.

Managing Director of Admore Park, Shile Oloto, disclosed that over N500 million in bank loans had been invested in the park over the past three years without any corresponding return on investment.

Oloto attributed the situation to the failure of the state government to effectively enforce traffic regulations, which he said had contributed to the underutilisation of accredited truck parks in the axis.

Details of the agreed steps and their implementation timeline are expected to shape whether the disruption is resolved within days or becomes structural.

Why readers outside Lagos should care

Port throughput is a national variable disguised as a Lagos traffic story. Every day containers sit idle is a day of landed-cost inflation on food, building materials and industrial inputs nationwide.

What LN247 is watching: whether the park-compliance issue is a bargaining tactic over parking fees and haulage conditions, or a straightforward capacity failure. The answer determines the fix.

AI Boom’s Real Constraint Is Now Power Stations, Not Code

By
Yemisi Lanre-Idowu
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AI boom affected

The AI industry has a new bottleneck, and it is made of concrete, copper and turbines.

A cluster of announcements this week shows the constraint on artificial intelligence is no longer software talent. It is electricity, land, memory chips and cooling.

Microsoft plans to triple its data centre capacity

Microsoft intends to more than triple its Azure data centre capacity to over 38 gigawatts by 2032, up from 12 gigawatts today, Bloomberg reported. To picture that scale: one gigawatt is roughly enough to power a city the size of San Francisco.

The expansion is a response to a server shortage the company has publicly acknowledged.

Customers are paying in advance

Oracle reported 30 per cent revenue growth to $19.3 billion for its August quarter and, more tellingly, collected $11.4 billion in customer prepayments — cash taken up front for computing capacity not yet delivered. That figure roughly doubled the cash its own operations generated in the period.

Customers demanding AI capacity are effectively financing someone else’s data centre.

OpenAI is rationing

OpenAI announced it will pause new subscriptions to its $200-a-month Pro plan because of demand for Astra, its new flagship model — an unusually direct admission of capacity exhaustion.

The supply chain beneath it

  • Analysts warn the memory chip market is heading toward a severe shortage, with the RAM crisis potentially far worse in 2027 because of AI demand.
  • Nvidia deepened its partnership with chip startup d-Matrix, tying rival silicon to Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion networking and Vera CPUs.
  • Blackstone is expanding beyond its announced $5 billion, 500-megawatt Google TPU purchase toward commitments reportedly running into tens of billions of dollars and multiple gigawatts.
  • SpaceX signed a cloud-compute deal worth about $1.11 billion per month starting 1 December, while a newly installed rocket-engineer management team restructures its data centre builds to include more backup power and cooling — a change that may slow expansion but reduce risk.
  • Wall Street’s AI infrastructure build-out is pegged at roughly $7.5 trillion of spending over five years.

The African angle LN247 readers should not miss

Every one of those deals is ultimately a bet on electricity generation.

Africa holds a large share of the world’s unserved population and, increasingly, the cheapest solar generation capacity on earth. If compute follows power, then grid build-out — not code — is the strategic sector for the next decade of African industrial policy.

The question for Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa is not whether AI arrives. It is whether African economies sell the electricity, or buy back the intelligence it produces.

Anti-Migrant Group Sets Fresh 30 September Deadline for Foreign Nationals in South Africa

By
Yemisi Lanre-Idowu
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A deadline has been set, and this time it carries a date most governments treat as a planning horizon rather than an ultimatum.

The South African anti-illegal-immigration group March and March has announced 30 September 2026 as a fresh deadline for undocumented foreign nationals to leave the country, Africanews and BBC Pidgin reported.

The group’s message to sending governments has been blunt, calling on African countries to collect their own citizens.

How the campaign escalated

Tensions have built for months. The group first made headlines with a 30 June deadline for undocumented foreign nationals to depart. Having passed without the group’s desired outcome, a new date has been issued.

The announcement was amplified by a protest outside the SADC Summit in Durban, where marchers called on regional leaders to confront mass migration directly.

The climate around it

The deadline lands alongside a deteriorating environment for African migrants and travellers in South Africa. On Friday, the Nigerian community raised the alleged killing of a Nigerian bishop at his Johannesburg home, with the Nigerian Citizens Association South Africa describing Nigerian residents and clergy as being under siege.

Regional governments now face an awkward question: whether to engage the grievance, the rhetoric, or both.

Practical guidance for LN247 readers in South Africa: keep certified copies of all permits, passports and application receipts accessible; register with your consulate; and avoid areas of scheduled demonstration activity on the reported dates. LN247 will continue to report developments with care.

Nigerian Community in South Africa Demands Justice After Bishop Allegedly Shot Dead

By
Yemisi Lanre-Idowu
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0
Nigerian community in South Africa

A Nigerian community abroad is demanding answers after the killing of one of its clergy.

The Nigerian Citizens Association South Africa (NICASA) has called for a thorough investigation after Bishop Taiwo Michael Fakunle, 58, was allegedly shot dead at his residence in Johannesburg, Vanguard and PM News reported.

The alleged killing is reported to have taken place on Friday 4 September 2026 at the cleric’s home. NICASA raised the case publicly on Thursday.

From Ekiti to Johannesburg

Reports identify Fakunle as an indigene of Iye in Ilejemeje Local Government Area of Ekiti State, who had been serving his congregation in South Africa.

According to the Nigerian Citizens Association South Africa (NICASA), the attackers fired several shots at Fakunle, hitting him more than seven times.

NICASA National President, Rev. Frank Onyekwelu, who disclosed the incident in a statement on Thursday, said the killing had caused deep pain among the victim’s relatives, friends and members of the Nigerian community.

Onyekwelu described the reported attack as a senseless act of violence and raised concerns about the safety of Nigerians living in South Africa.

A community under strain

“This was not merely an ordinary loss of life; it was a horrific and senseless act of violence that has robbed a family of a loved one and the Nigerian community of another precious life,” he said.

Following the incident, NICASA said it notified the Consulate General of Nigeria in Johannesburg. The association also confirmed that a murder case had been opened at Jeppe Police Station.

The group called on the South African Police Service (SAPS) to urgently establish the circumstances that led to Fakunle’s death and determine who was responsible.

Onyekwelu said the investigation must lead to the identification and arrest of the perpetrators, who should subsequently be prosecuted in accordance with South African law.

“We demand a thorough and credible investigation that will establish exactly what happened, identify all those responsible, apprehend the perpetrators and ensure that they are brought before the courts to face the full might of the law,” he said.

The association’s response frames the killing as part of a wider pattern of violence affecting Nigerian residents and clergy in South Africa — a concern the group has raised repeatedly as public hostility toward foreign nationals intensifies.

The case lands in an uncomfortable moment. The anti-immigration group March and March has set a fresh 30 September deadline for undocumented foreign nationals to leave South Africa, following protests outside the SADC Summit in Durban.

What NICASA wants: a thorough police investigation and accountability. The association says the family and supporters are seeking justice rather than vengeance.

LN247 will follow the case.

Nigeria Starts Making Its Own Insecticide-Treated Mosquito Nets

By
Yemisi Lanre-Idowu
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Mosquito net

Nigeria has begun producing insecticide-treated mosquito nets locally, a development with outsized implications for public health, Premium Times reported on Friday.

The nets remain the single most cost-effective tool against malaria, the disease that accounts for the largest share of Nigeria’s disease burden, driving clinic visits, childhood deaths and lost working days.

Why local manufacture matters

Until now, reliance on imported nets has meant exposure to exchange-rate swings, shipping delays and donor-funding cycles beyond anyone’s control in Lagos or Abuja.

Local production changes three things at once:

  • Price — domestic manufacture lowers the landed cost per net
  • Supply security — the pipeline no longer depends on foreign factories and freight lanes
  • Coverage speed — campaigns can be replenished without waiting on import clearance

Prevention as sovereignty

The shift fits a broader pattern visible across the Nigerian economy this month: the country is increasingly making at home what it used to buy abroad, from refined fuel to now, bed nets.

Prevention that a country can manufacture itself is prevention it cannot be cut off from.

Dangote Refinery IPO Opens Monday 14 September At ₦525 Per Share

By
Yemisi Lanre-Idowu
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Africa’s largest share offering goes live on Monday.

The Dangote Petroleum Refinery initial public offering opens for subscription on 14 September 2026 at an offer price of ₦525 per ordinary share, following approval from Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission.

The offer covers approximately 4.1 billion ordinary shares. If fully subscribed, it could raise about ₦2.15 trillion, or roughly $1.6 billion, making it the largest initial public offering in African history.

The offer also carries an over-allotment option that could expand the deal by as much as 30 per cent, depending on demand.

Minimum investment is ₦5,250

The minimum subscription is 10 ordinary shares, or ₦5,250 before platform fees and any currency conversion charges.

That low entry point is deliberate. Billionaire Aliko Dangote has described the listing as an IPO “for the people,” and has opened participation to ordinary Africans for as little as $4 apiece through fintech platforms, rather than limiting the offer to institutional investors.

Demand had already approached $2 billion before the public window opened, according to market reports.

Debt cut before listing

The refinery entered the listing period from a stronger financial position.

Africa’s biggest oil refinery reduced its debt by $570 million to $5.7 billion during the year, as it raised output and sales ahead of the offering, Bloomberg reported.

Analysts say the debt reduction, combined with rising production, improves the balance sheet investors will be buying into.

Why the timing matters

The listing arrives as Nigeria’s fuel-import bill falls sharply and the country’s trade surplus doubles to $9.5 billion, driven by lower fuel imports and higher crude and raw-material exports.

For retail investors, the offer is the first chance to own a direct stake in the facility that has reshaped that trade picture.

Practical note for subscribers: interested investors should confirm the list of authorised offering platforms and payment channels with the issuer’s official offer website before transferring funds. LN247 advises caution against unverified subscription links circulating on social media.

Benue Government Rejects Peter Obi’s Claims, Denies Blocking Visit To Yelewata

By
Favour Enyosa
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The Benue State Government has strongly rejected allegations by Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) presidential candidate Peter Obi that thugs linked to the state government prevented him from accessing Yelewata to sympathise with families affected by the 2025 attacks.

The state government described the allegation as unfounded and accused Obi of attempting to drag Governor Hyacinth Alia and the people of Benue into what it suggested could be an internal political dispute within the NDC.

In a statement issued by the Governor’s Chief Press Secretary, Tersoo Kula, the government denied having any knowledge of the alleged incident involving Obi.

Kula also questioned whether Obi visited Makurdi, the state capital, on Tuesday, citing what he described as previous instances of inaccurate claims about the state.

“Let it be known that Mr. Peter Obi is not a threat to Governor Alia in any way. Even if he actually visited the state, and we realized that he is a threat to anyone, the security agencies are there to handle the issue, not thugs. “The Statement read in part

Kula described Governor Alia as a peace-loving Reverend and said the governor is opposed to the use of thuggery.

He stressed that the administration does not engage, support or deploy thugs as instruments of governance or security.

According to the CPS, the governor remains committed to the rule of law and relies on recognised security agencies to maintain peace and order across Benue State.

The government also questioned how a presidential candidate could visit the state without relevant security authorities being formally informed of his movement.

Kula said such a visit would ordinarily require security coordination involving the Commissioner of Police and other relevant security agencies.

The state government said it was difficult to understand why Obi allegedly linked the incident to the Benue State Government and Governor Alia.

“If Mr. Obi is confronted with disagreements or internal political challenges within his party structure in Benue State, those issues should be resolved within the party rather than being conveniently transferred to the State Government.”He added

The Alia administration said it would remain focused on governance and would not be distracted by what it described as attempts to create political controversies.

It said its priorities remain improving security, delivering good governance and enhancing the welfare of residents across Benue State.

The government also urged the public to disregard allegations connecting it to any incident involving Obi.

“Benue remains open to legitimate visitors, political actors and all Nigerians who come in peace. “The Statement concluded

Peter Obi’s Convoy Blocked By Mob In Benue

By
Favour Enyosa
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The convoy of Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), was reportedly blocked by a group of youths in Benue State on Tuesday.

The incident occurred along Gboko Road as Obi and his team were reportedly making their way into Makurdi after arriving in the state by air.

According to reports, the convoy was stopped by a mob carrying sticks while Obi was travelling towards Yelwata in Guma Local Government Area.

The Benue State Police Command confirmed that it was aware of the incident involving Obi’s movement to Yelwata.

The police said its operatives were providing security for the presidential candidate and his team during the movement.

In a statement, the Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Orchia Aondongu, said the reason the youths blocked the convoy was not immediately known.

He added that the command was monitoring the situation and investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident.

The police assured the public that further information would be provided as the investigation progresses.

Over 1,000 Migrants Rescued Off West Africa After Dangerous Atlantic Journey

By
Favour Enyosa
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0

More than 1,000 migrants have been rescued off the coast of West Africa after attempting the perilous Atlantic migration route to Europe, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has reported.

The humanitarian organisation said 1,046 people were rescued in a single week while travelling in seven boats that had departed The Gambia and were heading towards Spain’s Canary Islands.

According to MSF, the boats became stranded at sea before the migrants were intercepted during the last week of August. They were subsequently taken to Nouadhibou in Mauritania and the cities of Rosso and Dakar in Senegal.

Thousands of mostly young migrants attempt the dangerous Atlantic route each year, often travelling in overcrowded and poorly maintained boats in the hope of reaching Europe through the Canary Islands.

Many make the journey while fleeing poverty and difficult living conditions, turning to irregular migration routes as European countries have tightened border controls and significantly restricted visa access.

MSF said many of those rescued were experiencing serious health problems following their ordeal at sea.

The survivors reportedly suffered from extreme dehydration, unconsciousness, bone fractures, severe exhaustion, as well as skin, gastric and respiratory infections.

“The psychological impact on the survivors is profound, as many witnessed their loved ones die during the crossing”, it added.

The group included 134 women, one of whom was pregnant, and 88 minors, according to MSF.

Most of the migrants were from Senegal and The Gambia, while others came from Mali, Guinea, Ivory Coast and several other countries.

Several survivors told MSF they had experienced violence both in their countries of origin and during their journeys along the migration route.

The latest rescues highlight the continuing dangers faced by migrants attempting to cross the Atlantic in search of safety and better economic opportunities in Europe.

Despite the risks, the route remains active, with thousands continuing to attempt the journey aboard boats that can be vulnerable to mechanical problems, overcrowding and harsh sea conditions.

2027 Presidency: Peter Obi Says Seyi Makinde Is Qualified To Lead Nigeria

By
Favour Enyosa
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0

Former Anambra State Governor and Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) presidential candidate Peter Obi has described Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde as qualified to contest for and become Nigeria’s president in the 2027 general elections.

Obi made the statement on Monday in Abuja during the unveiling of Makinde’s presidential campaign office ahead of the 2027 elections.

While recognising Makinde’s presidential ambition under the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), Obi urged Nigerians to freely decide who they want to support when they head to the polls.

“A Nigeria of unity and inclusion. We have a candidate who is contesting the presidency today: my dear brother Seyi Makinde. Is he qualified to be president? Yes,” Obi said.

Obi also appealed to politicians across the opposition to set aside their differences and concentrate on tackling some of the country’s major challenges, including poverty, hunger and insecurity.

“We can’t all continue the way we are going today. Our people are hungry. Our people are poor. Our people are insecure,” he said.

The NDC presidential candidate further called for a political culture focused more on improving the welfare of Nigerians than on prolonged political disagreements.

“We don’t want politics of quarrel, politics of disagreement. Let our quarrel be to feed our people. Let our quarrel be to pull our people out of poverty,” he added.

Makinde and Obi are among several opposition politicians expected to be involved in the 2027 presidential race, as political parties and candidates begin positioning themselves ahead of the election.

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