The Nigerian Senate has confirmed that President Bola Tinubu’s administration is dedicated to seeing the $25 billion gas pipeline project between Nigeria and Morocco through to completion. Sen. Jimoh Ibrahim, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Inter-Parliamentary Affairs, provided the guarantee during the African Parliament’s executive session, which is now taking place in Casablanca, Morocco. Ibrahim told his audience that a study of such projects was underway and that carrying out the gas project would be consistent with the Tinubu administration’s determination to finish Nigeria’s abandoned projects.
Ibrahim, who represents the Ondo-South Senatorial District, stated that the gas project would be 5,660 kilometers long and have an annual capacity of 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas. Ibrahim informed the gathering that the pipeline would pass through 13 African nations and also conveyed the Senate President Godswill Akpabio’s best wishes. These include Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and Morocco, all of which will be supplied from Nigeria. He went on to say that the project was intended to help the impacted member countries move toward a more sustainable energy future, remove thousands of young people from the labor market, and advance industrial and digital development. Ibrahim urged the opening of the Atlantic for greater opportunities, pointing out that the initiative would be revolutionary for both countries as a result Morocco would gain from supplying Europe. Given the amount of potential that the new investment will create for both nations, the congressman further encouraged Morocco to change its visa policy to permit Nigerian nationals to travel without visa limits. The final investment decision had originally been scheduled for 2023 but was postponed to 2025, according to Senator Ibrahim, who also said that the project was now in the feasibility assessment phase as well as route planning stages, with discussions continuing between key agencies and stakeholders. Additionally, the lawmaker told the meeting that the Nigerian Senate was already drafting important legislation to assist the Tinubu administration in expediting the construction of the gas infrastructure.
