By Idris Muhammed Abdullahi
It is nothing short of a national embarrassment that in 2025, Nigeria still battles with avoidable deaths on our waterways while a multi-billion-naira inland port—Baro Port—sits rotting in the heart of Niger State. This is not just a case of infrastructure underutilization. It is a disturbing metaphor for the collapse of vision, responsibility, and urgency in governance, and more specifically, the alarming incompetence or complicity of the Nigerian Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA).
Baro Port was designed as a strategic economic hub. Built with billions of naira from public coffers, it was to serve as a gateway for maritime trade and a logistics backbone to decongest road transport, empower local communities, and strengthen Nigeria’s agro-industrial value chain. Yet today, it lies stillborn—a glorified museum piece guarded by rusting gates and fading ambition.
This disgrace plays out in Niger State, ironically dubbed the Food Basket of the Nation. The state has made serious, commendable efforts to maintain agricultural productivity amid insecurity, inflation, and dwindling federal attention. It offers one of the most fertile opportunities to sustain Nigeria’s food supply chain. Yet, with Baro Port neglected, farmers, processors, and traders are denied access to critical market linkages that would cut transport costs, reduce post-harvest losses, and drive export readiness.
Meanwhile, people are dying literally on Nigeria’s waterways. In the absence of functional water transport alternatives, citizens resort to unsafe, overloaded, or unregulated boats. The stories of capsized ferries and drowned passengers have become alarmingly routine. What is NIWA doing? Beyond press releases and the occasional visit for photo-ops, the agency has failed woefully in its duty to ensure safe and efficient inland water transport. How do we justify the continued existence of NIWA as a statutory body when billions in infrastructure are wasted and the public it is meant to serve keeps dying?
Is this administrative incompetence? Or as Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso once alluded to, is it a calculated agenda—the killing of the Northern economy? When critical infrastructure in the North is neglected or deliberately allowed to die, when youth unemployment remains staggering despite the presence of viable projects like Baro Port, questions must be asked. Who benefits from keeping the North economically paralyzed?
The recent opening of the UK’s export gates for select goods from Nigeria should have prompted a strategic response from NIWA. Here was a golden opportunity to reposition Baro Port as an inland consolidation hub for agricultural exports from Niger and neighbouring states yam, rice, shea butter, sesame, ginger, and hibiscus. Instead, silence. No stakeholder engagements, no logistics plans, no economic zone activation, and certainly no jobs created.
This shame must end.
The Presidency must not allow this institutional embarrassment to continue. NIWA must be compelled, either through executive fiat or legislative oversight, to reactivate Baro Port and other dormant inland waterways infrastructure across the country. A full audit of funds expended, timelines missed, and benefits lost must be undertaken. Heads must roll. Reforms must follow.
We must remind NIWA and the government at large: infrastructure is not just about ribbon-cutting ceremonies. It is about opportunity. It is about dignity. It is about life and livelihood. And in the case of Baro Port, it is about honouring the trust of a region that has given so much to feed the nation, yet receives little in return.
Let us not wait until the next boat capsizes, or until another billion is budgeted for yet another master plan. The time to act is now.
Idris Muhammed Abdullahi is a fierce advocate for equitable development. He writes from Abuja.
