The Federal Government plans to resume passenger lifting on the Kaduna-Abuja railway corridor before the end of this month, eight months after terrorists bombed the Kaduna-Abuja train corridor and abducted a number of people, causing the suspension of services.
The announcement was made on Monday in Abuja by the minister of transportation, Mu’azu Jaji Sambo, who also provided an update on the ministry’s accomplishments between 2015 and 2022. He also mentioned that the federal government intends to connect the 36 state capitals of Nigeria with the rail network to offer citizens a seamless means of transportation.
Sambo, who acknowledged the suffering caused by the attack on the Kaduna-Abuja train route in March 2022, claimed that the government had drawn many lessons from the crime and taken many steps to stop further attacks and provide service customers with a sense of security and safety.
Sambo remarked that the rail line had been equipped with a 24-hour security monitoring system to enable constant real-time observation and control while also assuring that all of the kidnapped passengers had been freed and reunited with their family and loved ones.
The minister declared, “The Abuja Kaduna catastrophe shall not happen again, not just because we have committed it to God, but also because we have taken action to thwart any new attack. The attack has taught us some valuable lessons.
“The lesson learned is to maintain ongoing surveillance and monitoring as each train departs and arrives on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Moving ahead, it should be feasible to track what happens on the rail line in real time.
This month, we’ll start up that service again. I warned you that we wouldn’t start operating again until all the abducted passengers may have been freed. We will restart operation on the Kaduna-Abuja rail route by the end of November 2022, thanks to the Grace of God and the efforts of our security services working under the capable leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Regarding the Itakpe-Warri route’s suspension of service, the minister said that because it is one of the most crucial corridors on the national rail line, efforts are being made to guarantee that it resumes full service and benefits the populace to the greatest extent possible.
The minister stated that in order to address the difficulties currently encountered on the route, the ministry must obtain the Federal Executive Council’s consent before beginning work on the Itakpe-Warri train corridor on the basis of an engineering, procurement, construction, and financing model.
“The Ministry of Transportation wants to go back to FEC for approval for carrying out the Itakpe-Warri Railway Line on the basis of the Engineering, Procurement, Construction, and Financing model because it is one of the most important rail projects in Nigeria as it remains in the central line in Nigeria,” Sambo said. It makes it simple to get from Abuja to Warri. The Federal Government is aware of its importance. All Nigerians should be aware that the Federal Government’s Railway Modernization Programme aims to connect each state capital with rail in order to make life easier for all Nigerians who want to move from one place to another.
The minister also argued in favor of extending the Katsina rail line in Nigeria to Maradi in the Niger Republic, claiming that doing so would promote trade between Nigeria and other nations along that corridor and that an agreement with those nations wasn’t necessary before the project was completed.
Sambo also refuted claims that the federal government approved a narrow-gauge rail line for the South East while adopting standard gauge for other regions of the nation. According to Sambo, the decision to use a narrow-gauge rail line from Maiduguri through Jos and other northern regions to the South was made due to the government’s limited financial resources and was not specific to any region of the nation.
According to Sambo, the federal government chose the less expensive alternative because to financing limitations when the decision to choose narrow gauge was taken before to his appointment. The cost difference between narrow gauge and standard gauge was $3 billion and $12 billion, respectively.
The minister also clarified that numerous lawsuits brought by interested parties, some of which predate the Buhari administration, were to blame for the protracted delay in dredging the Calabar River Port, which has been included in numerous budgets for decades.
However, he claimed that President Buhari had ordered that the appropriate actions be made to resolve the legal obstacles, dredge the crucial port, and support maritime operations while also providing jobs for Nigerians.
Overall, the minister bragged that since the administration’s beginning in 2015, the Buhari administration has improved the transport sector with significant projects and services that have revolutionized the industry, generated millions of jobs, and boosted marine security.
“Within the period under review, the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari revived the dead commercial railway services in Nigeria; locomotives and carriages were bought and others were reconditioned,” Sambo bragged. Commercial operations on the Abuja-Kaduna rail corridor began in July 2016; those on the Warri-Itakpe corridor began in April 2021; and those on the Lagos-Ibadan double track standard gauge began in June 2021.
“The President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration has made enormous strides in closing the infrastructural gap in the transportation sector, including the introduction of favorable policies, the deep sea ports development program, the inland dry port initiative, the railway modernization program, and the deep sea ports development program, to name a few.
The minister said, “The sector is far from flawless, but the ground-level actions will serve as a true pattern for the future administration to build upon.”
Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the minister of information, took advantage of the opportunity to criticize the opposition for claiming that the Buhari administration has nothing to deploy as a campaign tool for the 2023 elections.
“I want to address what I will refer to as an absurdity that the opposition is putting out there, which is that the Buhari Administration has nothing to campaign with in the lead-up to the 2023 general elections,” Mohammed stated. It is a painful irony that the party that presided over the affairs of this great nation during a period of abundance, but was unable to construct even one modern rail line, is the one making such unjustified accusations against a government that has completed at least three standard gauge rail lines.
“The Buhari government has plenty of options for honoring its accomplishments, in fact. As I previously stated, we have finished building the Abuja-Kaduna, Lagos-Ibadan, and Itakpe-Warri Standard Gauge Rail Lines, brand-new airport terminals in Abuja, Lagos, and Port Harcourt, housing projects in 35 states, road projects in every state, and we have completed or are in the process of finishing housing projects in 35 states.
we almost no longer rely on imported rice and other crops thanks to the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme.
We started with 15 standard rice mills and now we have over 50. We also have our ground-breaking National Social Investment Programme, which provides one meal a day to 9.8 million schoolchildren, has empowered 1 million youth and is training another 500,000, as well as enrolling 1,632,480 households in the Conditional Cash Transfer Program. We are also proud of the Integrated National Security and Waterways Protect.”
“They are quick to point to some economic indicators like the inflation rate and the value of the naira, but the reality is that if they had to deal with a pandemic that occurred only once every century, two economic downturns, and low oil prices, Nigeria wouldn’t have had an economy at all,” Mohammed said.
