N3.2bn eastern rail rehabilitation begins today after Buhari flag-off

President Muhammadu Buhari will be performing the groundbreaking ceremony for the commencement of rehabilitation work on the eastern rail corridor today, March 9, 2021.

The cost of the project is put at N3.2bn.

Minister of Transportation, Mr Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, who confirmed this recently, also said the President had also approved the redirecting of the eastern rail line to two new spurs: Abakaliki in Ebonyi State and Awka in Anambra State.

The eastern corridor is a narrow-gauge rail track that stretches from Port Harcourt through the South-East, Middle Belt, North-East and terminates in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.

Amaechi also said the Federal Government was still negotiating loans for the Lagos to Calabar standard gauge rail project.

Managing Director of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, Fidet Okhiria, an engineer, said the Port Harcourt to Maiduguri reconstruction project had earlier been awarded.

Okhiria said, “What we want to do now is to reconstruct Port Harcourt to Maiduguri, a contract of N3.2bn has already been signed and work will commence soon.”

Amaechi, a former Rivers State governor, has been criticised by some South-East leaders of ignoring the region in railway development he is spearheading for the Buhari administration.

The new standard gauge rail line from Lagos to Ibadan is substantially ready and a skeletal service has commenced. Only recently, the groundbreaking event for Kano-Maradi rail line, also a standard gauge, was held.

Two other modern rail lines already completed and running are Abuja-Kaduna and Warri-Itakpe – Lokoja.

But the minister, responding to the criticism, had said contrary to the claim of exclusion, there was only delay in the execution of the modern eastern rail line (standard gauge).

He attributed the delay to bureaucratic bottlenecks caused by the Public Procurement Act.

Amaechi said, “Sometime in 2017, we placed an advertisement for rail from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri and that is what the law expects us to do. We cannot skip the law on construction of standard gauge.

“Again, even the narrow gauge construction does not only concern the South East; the same narrow gauge transverses Port Harcourt to Maiduguri.”

He further explained that the government could only apply funds to projects as loans were approved.

The minister said, “The President insists on rule of law and the law passed by the National Assembly in terms of public procurement is very tedious and not easy to conclude; it takes a very long time.”

He also said, “For the railway you want to do from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri is about 12 billion dollars and that is one-year budget of Nigeria. Therefore, everything is done systematically. We cannot do all the projects at the same time.

“What we are doing is, as we get the loan approved, we execute the project. Currently, we are following due process.”