By Hassan Peppe Yobe
WED JULY 22 2026-theGBJournal| The Sahel Cargo Airline. The Lake Chad Airline. The Yobe Agro-Food Industrial Export Hub. These three names — unfamiliar to many today — will, if the plans laid in Makkah and Jeddah this July come to fruition, redefine the economy of northern Nigeria and the wider Lake Chad Basin within this decade.
This is the story of how a Nigerian state governor, a determined delegation, and the Saudi-Nigeria Business Council came together to design a new economic corridor — one built on halal meat, sesame, and direct flights.
The Lake Chad Basin is home to over 45 million people. It holds one of Africa’s largest concentrations of livestock, with Nigeria alone raising more than 20 million cattle, alongside vast production of sesame, gum arabic, sorghum, and other high-value commodities.
It sits within striking distance of the Gulf, a region that imports over $15 billion in food annually and is actively searching for secure, halal-compliant supply chains. And yet, until now, not a single integrated agro-industrial facility existed to process any of this produce for export. Not a single dedicated cargo airline operated out of any airport in northern Nigeria.
Not a single scheduled flight connected the major cities of the Lake Chad Basin — Damaturu, Maiduguri, N’Djamena, Maroua — despite them lying within a 200-kilometre radius of one another. The paradox has been brutal: abundance surrounded by isolation.
This is the reality that His Excellency Governor Mai Mala Buni has worked to change — not only as the Executive Governor of Yobe State, but also in his capacity as Chairman of the Lake Chad Basin Governors Forum, where he has championed regional integration, cross-border trade, and economic revitalisation as the most durable answers to the challenges facing the Basin.
It was under his leadership and clear mandate that a delegation from Yobe State sat across the table from the Saudi-Nigeria Business Council over two days — the 19th and 20th of July 2026 — in Makkah and Jeddah, to present a fully prepared investment agenda and to seek the partnerships that will turn this paradox into prosperity.
The delegation was led by Mohammed Goje, Acting Secretary to the State Government, with full authority on behalf of the Governor. I had the honour of serving as Lead Negotiator, but more importantly, I had the privilege of presenting projects that are not theoretical — they are designed, costed, and ready.
We were joined by Alhaji Buba Kallawa, Member of the Yobe State House of Assembly; Alhaji Liman Ibrahim; Professor Sheriff Almuhajir , who served as Financial Advisor to the degelation, and presented the layered guarantee framework that underpins the entire investment proposition.
Technical leads from the delivery consortia for the Hub Dr Babagana Mohammed Adam and the airlines Mr Abubakar Bello also accompanied us, ensuring that every question could be answered with precision.
The first project we laid before the Saudi-Nigeria Business Council, chaired by Sultan bin Mahdi Al-Qahtani, was the Yobe Agro-Food Industrial Export Hub — a $200 million halal-certified industrial park anchored to the Muhammadu Buhari International Cargo Airport in Damaturu.
The Hub will house a modern meat processing factory, grain milling facilities, alfalfa pellet production, and cold-chain storage. At full capacity, it will process and export 105,000 tonnes of halal meat, alfalfa, sesame, gum arabic, and sorghum annually, primarily to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
This is not a farm. It is not a collection point. It is a factory designed to capture value at source — processing what our farmers and herders produce, certifying it to global halal standards, and exporting it directly from our own airport. @DrGojeM
Peppe Yobe is Senior Special Assistant on Media to Governor of Yobe State, Dr. Mai Mala Buni
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