Amaechi gives assurance

The Minister of Transportation Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, while expressing satisfaction at the pace of work on the Lagos-Ibadan Standard Gauge, assured commuters that the project will be delivered at the end of the year, and will be President Muhammadu Buhari’s new year gift to Nigerians.

The Minister spoke at Moniya Station, in Ibadan, on Saturday after conducting top members of the ministry, and the Nigerian Railway Corporation on an assessment tour of the project being handled by the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC).

Amaechi said no stone would be left unturned to ensure delivery of the train by January 1, 2021. Noting that with what he has seen, it is clear that the contractor is ready to deliver on the $1.7 billion project on schedule.

According to him, but for the slow pace of work at two of the seven minor stations, he is satisfied that the stations will be ready on schedule, for commercial activity to start as soon as possible.

He said: “It is important to say that we are ready to commence service on this standard gauge line before the festive season, but it will no longer be free.” He however did not announce any fare regime saying the Corporation would come up with a fare regime that is acceptable to all. Amaechi stated that it would be wrong to hold the Lagos or Ogun state governments responsible for accidents that would have been prevented if the ministry had put in place the necessary safety measures.

“The first thing for us is to complete our overpasses and underpasses so that when an accident happens, we will say Lagos state government is liable because we have completed our own. If we don’t complete our own and anything happens, we will also be as liable as the Lagos state government. There are communities along these routes, especially in the Ogun State area. We have in the course of constructing this rail line elevated the tracks and erosion is happening but it can’t cross over to the next place.

“We are being unfair to them because they gave us all the cooperation we wanted. If these communities have been this good to us, why do we want to visit them with what was not there before we came? “(It) is for the engineers to take a study, village by village, of what impact our rail line must have caused to those communities, viz-a-viz EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment),” he said.

“We have cooperation from the various communities along with the standard gauge construction; the contractors have done what they could do but the problem is the change in weather. They couldn’t work beyond that period, besides that, I think the contractors have done well. The construction is coming to an end; they are trying to beat the target they gave the Ministry of Transportation because there is a huge improvement. Is there any facility in Nigeria that is better than the one in Ebute-Meta,?” he asked.

He said: “There are communities along these routes especially in the Ogun State area. We have in the course of constructing this rail line elevated the tracks and erosion is happening but it can’t cross over to the next place.”

He assured that the Federal Government will continue to take appropriate actions to alleviate the sufferings of the people. Fielding questions on the controversial Kano-Maradi rail line, Amaechi directed the contractor to start paying compensation to owners of land affected by the project. China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation is the contractor handling both the Lagos-Ibadan and the Kano-Maradi rail line projects. Amaechi stated that the contractor had been directed to acquire right-of-way for the Kano-Maradi line.

The minister said: “Kano-Maradi is at the stage of loan negotiations. In fact, we are fast-tracking them and now they (contractors) are doing front end engineering even before the loan; we are insisting on that. We believe that the front end engineering should be able to end before January. However, we’ve told them that we can’t wait till January, they should start now to acquire right-of-way, pay compensation and start clearing the right-of-way so that they can prepare well when the front end engineering is over.”

The minister stated that work could start first on the Kano-Maradi line before the Ibadan-Kano line, as he hinted that the Lagos-Ibadan line could be officially flagged-off by the President on January 1, 2021.

Amaechi said: “We believe that the fastest will be Kano-Maradi because the Chinese have a way of slowing down the loan process. In fact, it is worse after the imbroglio at the National Assembly, So from October they have moved to December and now we are hearing the first quarter. So that (Ibadan-Kano line) may take time to come. But there is a third project, which is the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri and I can’t give a timeline on that.”

The minister explained that it was more tedious to borrow from the Chinese, adding that “the next project that may kick off easily will be the Kano-Maradi whose loan is coming from the European banks.”

In his remarks, the Chairperson of the Board of Nigeria Railway Corporation, (NRC), Ibrahim Musa, said in the course of the project, the management of NRC sat with Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA) and agreed on areas where overhead crossing and bridges would be constructed.

“We agreed that some bridges and overhead crossing will be constructed by the federal government while others will be done by state governments. For instance, we constructed new two-line bridges at Costain and brought down the old ones to enable us to have access. As we are coming, you can see that passengers’ movement is under the track, while in some places we could see overhead bridges from Lagos to Ibadan in consideration of human and goods trafficking along the corridors,” he said.

Mr Musa said that the standard gauge between Lagos and Ibadan was the first moving train, compared to the narrow gauge that the country had in the past. He also said that although people were still asking for more access to the corridor, their request would, however, be considered based on merit and the finances available.

The Director of Railway, Federal Ministry of Transportation, Babakobi Muhammed, said the ministry officials held meetings with transportation ministries of Lagos, Ogun, and Oyo states to ensure a safe corridor for the train. Mr Muhammed said that the ministry has made provisions for pedestrian crossings whose locations are being worked on.