Lagos State Government in Conjunction With Afreximbank and Access Holding Plc Signs Contract Worth $1.35 Billion

The Lagos State Government and the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), in collaboration with Access Holding Plc, signed a contract worth $1.35 billion on Monday to boost infrastructure and food security in the State.

The ceremony took place on the sidelines of the ongoing 2023 AfriCaribbean trade and investment forum in Georgetown, Guyana.

During the meeting, a representative of Afreximbank said: “We will be providing the equivalent of $1.352 billion in local currency in support of Lagos State government of Nigeria to support key trade enabling infrastructure to help promote industrialization and export manufacturing”.

The fund aimed to assist in the creation of roads that will cause swift transit between areas of productive centres with areas of consumption and areas of processing and will also boost trading that will empower the people of Lagos State and Nigerians as a whole.

The deal we will be signing today is very strategic for Afreximbank because this financing is taking financing closer to the people by supporting the sub-sovereigns. It has been in the works with the Lagos State government and our strategic partner, Access Bank, the report stated.

Speaking with journalists during the signing ceremony in Guyana, the Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu said that these projects will have a great impact on Lagosians.

He said,

• There are five legacy projects in all. The first one is the first phase of the fourth mainland bridge that will start from the Aja end of Lagos, cross the water up onto Ikorodu, and move to the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. 

• The second infrastructure is what we call the Omokrik, an infrastructure that will unlock a huge real estate, a huge infrastructure that has been landlocked in Lagos because of the crossing over of a body of water to have access to the land. This is the new Lagos that we are trying to recreate. The third project will be the Lekki Airport."

In addition to that, the Group CEO of Access Holding Plc, Herbert Wigwe, said: “What we have today is remarkable. It is a sub-nation transaction being sponsored by Afreximbank and supported by Access Bank. I am here on behalf of Access Holding to witness what is perhaps the most outstanding transaction that has come up in recent times.

“The fund is for infrastructure, it is in local currency, $1.35 billion equivalent to support the third mainland bridge, to support food sufficiency in Lagos and other developmental infrastructure in Lagos. It is for a very significant tenor and we are making sure that we have the appropriate financing for the development of Lagos. The whole idea is to decongest Lagos, improve the infrastructure, to support the generation of increased Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of Lagos and continue to spur the growth in its GDP.”