Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi

BY FRANCIS EZEM

The Federal Government in Abuja Tuesday signed a $6.68bn (N2.5trillion) contract agreement with the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation CCECC, for the construction of the Ibadan-Kaduna railway segment of the Lagos-Kano rail line project.

The government also projects that the contract, which commenced in March 2017 as part of the implementation of the second leg of the Lagos-Kano line, which encompasses the Lagos-Ibadan rail line currently under construction would be completed within a maximum period of three years.                                                                                                                                                          The Federal Ministry of Transport, which made this disclosure in a statement yesterday, explained that the contract agreement was for the implementation of the addendum four, which covers the Ibadan- Kaduna segment of the Lagos- Kano rail line project.

According to the statement, Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, has assured that the contract will be completed in a space of between two to three years. The Minister also said that the ministry will provide its counterpart funding in between the 2018 and 2019 budgets.

“The Ibadan- Kaduna Standard Gauge line will pass through Osogbo-Ilorin-Minna to Kaduna, with a single track branch line from Osogbo to Ado-Ekiti. This contract is in fulfillment of Federal Government’s plan to complete the Lagos- Kano rail modernisation project which was started in 2006 and broken into segments for implementation in 2008”, he had explained

Amaechi also said: “The segmentation phase of the contract commenced with the Abuja- Kaduna Rail Line in 2011 which was completed and commissioned for commercial operation by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016”.

It would be recalled that the Federal Government has since 2011 embarked on an aggressive infrastructural renewal programme, which led to the rehabilitation of some existing narrow gauge as well as construction of new standard gauge rail lines across the country, many of which are operational.