• Friday, March 29, 2024
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FG identifies 60% challenges stalling Lagos-Ibadan rail project

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Rotimi Amaechi, Nigeria’s minister of transportation accompanied by Lai Mohammed, the minister of information said the federal government have identified about 60 percent of some of the bottlenecks hampering the ongoing Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge rail project.

Making this disclosure at the end of the monthly inspection tour of the standard gauge rail project on Tuesday, the minister said in the quest to have the knowledge and experience of the infrastructural development going on under the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, the federal government
started with the rail project because of the capacity rail has to transform the economy.

While admitting that there are hitches along the rail corridor, Amaechi said, the federal government and contractors have found solutions to some of them up to 60 per cent.

As at the time of filing this report, Chinese Civil Engineering and Construction Company (CCECC), the contractors handling the project has started the laying of tracks from Papalanto, Ogun State. It’s target is to lay 1.2 kilometer of tracks daily with a project completion time line fixed for January 2019.

According to the minister, 60 per cent of the solutions have been found and CCECC has agreed to implement those issues.
The next one which is a natural hitch is the rain. We say that track slaying is what can be done during the rainy season while the remaining civil work can resume from August after the rainy season.

On his part, Lai Mohammed, pointed out that the idea about the project is to showcase to Nigerians the amount of work this government has been able to do in the last three years.

Lai Mohammed said that the idea is to let Nigerians know that the administration has done a lot in the area of infrastructure development. In particular people complain that they do not know we have done so much. So we want to show people what we have achieved.

”Coming back to today’s meeting, I think one thing we have achieved in the last two hours we started is that the December day for the Lagos – Ibadan modern gauge is not negotiable and I am happy to say that both consultants, contractors and everybody involved have seen why it is important to meet this deadline. Though there are challenges, but they are not insurmountable”. He added.

Describing it as a flagship programme that would transform the economy tremendously, the information minister said over 7000 Nigerians have been employed. As for the laying of the tracks, yes we do 1.2km daily but that’s with just one machine and we have two machines which means we can do 2.4 km a day. So you can see that the project is feasible by December.

We will work towards the December 2018 dead line, we will work to achieve that but we all agree that the December date is not negotiable.

 

MIKE OCHONMA