Lagos airport monorail design approved: the five stops from Ikeja to MMIA

The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, says he has approved the design of a Lagos Airport monorail that would carry commuters and air travellers from Ikeja Railway Station to the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA). He announced the approval on his verified X account on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, saying the decision was taken at a meeting the day before.

Keyamo said he was joined by the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Aviation, the Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and engineering teams from the ministry and FAAN. “We appraised and approved the design of the Lagos Airport monorail,” he wrote.

Why it matters

The monorail would give travellers a rail connection between the airport and the Lagos Red Line, the state’s commuter railway, at Ikeja Railway Station, which Keyamo described as the point “where the Lagos Redline terminates”. He called the monorail “an integral part of the reconstruction of the nation’s major gateway at the MMIA in Lagos”.

Where will it stop?

Keyamo listed five stations along the route:

• Ikeja Station
• Domestic Airport Station
• Beesam Station
• Toll Gate Station
• MMI Airport Station

The line would end at the new MMIA Terminal 1, which he said “is now being reconstructed”.

How does it fit with the airport rebuild?

The monorail is the latest piece of a wider plan for the Lagos airports that Keyamo has described over the past 15 months.

• July 2025: after a Federal Executive Council meeting, Keyamo said the rehabilitation of the Lagos airports would cost N712,258,565,482.18 in total, with a completion timeframe of 22 months, TheCable reported. He said the old Terminal 1 building, opened in 1979, would be stripped “to only the carcass” and rebuilt.
• June 2026: at the Invest Lagos 3.0 summit on Monday, 8 June, Keyamo said President Bola Tinubu had approved a $500 million investment to modernise and rebuild the airport. “This is not borrowed money,” he said. He also said the ministry was working with the Lagos State Government to extend the rail line from Ikeja through the General Aviation Terminal (GAT) and the MM2 terminal to the international terminal.
• October 2026: on the same day he announced the monorail design, Keyamo signed settlement agreements ending the long dispute with Bi-Courtney over the MM2 domestic terminal, as GistMatrix reported earlier today.

What do we not know yet?

GistMatrix went through the minister’s announcement and his earlier statements on the airport. None of them says:

• how much the monorail will cost, or who will pay for it;
• who will build and run it;
• when work will start, or when it should open;
• whether it is the same project as the rail extension through GAT and MM2 that Keyamo described in June. The station names he has now given are different.

What happens next

• The details: watch for the ministry or FAAN to announce the cost, the contractor and a timetable for the monorail.
• Terminal 1: the line depends on the rebuilt terminal. In June, Keyamo said that “within the next twenty-two months” Nigerians and visitors would see a transformation of the airport.

Do you fly through Lagos? Tell GistMatrix how you get to the airport now, and whether you would switch to the monorail.