The Nigerian Senate says railway transportation is necessary for a developing nation like Nigeria.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Land Transportation, Senator Adamu Aliero stated this on Monday at the Professor Oluwole Soyinka Railway station in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Southwest Nigeria.
Aliero, along with other committee members, during their oversight function assured the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) of all legislative support for achieving its core mandate.
He said the National Assembly had passed into law a supplementary bill and over 530 billion naira as counterpart funding for railway modernization and rehabilitation in Nigeria, while 85% of the funding would be sourced outside either from NEXIM bank or African Development Bank.
According to him, just last week, the president of the African Development Bank had promised that $350 million would be released to the Federal government of Nigeria for the construction of a rail line between Kano and Maradi.
President Bola Tinubu has been to China last month towards negotiation to release 85% of funding for Ibadan to Kano.
The railway modernization project started during former president Olusegun Obasanjo but didn’t continue until the immediate past president Muhammad Buhari took over. Negotiations are ongoing to link rail from Port Harcourt to Enugu, Aba, Benue, Jos, and Gombe to Maiduguri.
The Senator who lauded President Bola Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope” agenda for developing the country through infrastructure, commended the gigantic initiative to construct a 1,000 km rail, connecting many states in Nigeria.
“Linking rail line from Ebutemeta to the seaport is a welcome development, Apapa in particular, we have been told that 16 train services are provided by NRC from Ibadan to Lagos, Kano- Lagos, Funtua-Apapa, Port Harcourt-Aba, Itkape-Warri plus other services like Abuja-Kaduna etc.”
Responding to the assessment of the facilities, he further said, “We are very impressed, the facilities provided met the international standards, some of us have been to Europe, America, and other countries, What we are seeing here is what they have in other countries, the digital is automated, it will be difficult to commit any fraud.”
Access Roads
While fielding questions on the need to provide access roads to the train station, Senator Aliero said the constitution of Nigeria has been altered as the railway act which was on the exclusive list is now on the concurrent list which means both the state and federal government can legislate on railway transportation, thereby allowing states to establish or construct their own rail line which will be regulated by NRC.
“The state government should complement the federal government by providing road accessibility to railway stations because we have millions of thousands that are transported via rail from the seaport to the hinterland, particularly in the area of interconnectivity.”
Security
While reacting to the adverse effect of vandalism, the Senate Committee Chairman called for collaboration between the government and the governed to prevent the assets from being vandalized by economic saboteurs, whom he regarded as direct beneficiaries of the infrastructure.
“We are impressed by the infrastructure provided by CCECC and it is the duty of everyone to protect these infrastructures. We are going to imbibe maintenance culture on these infrastructures and our engineers have been trained to exhibit standard tendencies like their trainers the CCECC.”
The high point of the event was the inspection of facilities at Mobolaji Johnson station Alagomeji Lagos, the Wagon plant assembling in Kajola, and Prof.Oluwole Soyinka station in Abeokuta Ogun state.
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