Nigerian railway sector, eight years down the line, very little has changed.

Dear colleagues, the following article was NOT written by me. I have only made a few corrections and highlighted a few words, quotes, etc.

My point, however, is that the Nigerian rail sector landscape hasn’t moved much, if at all, eight years later.

Please read the below:

Nigerian railway: A tale of failed contracts, dashed hope
February 4, 2016

After prolonged neglect of the nation’s railway, recent efforts by the government to revive and modernize the transport mode have not yielded the desired results, RASHEED BISIRIYU writes -

“Fifty-five years after independence, Nigeria still struggles to operate part of the 3,505km railway inherited from the British colonial masters amid numerous failed contracts.”

There are high expectations that a weekly train from Lagos to Kano will be doubled after rehabilitating its dilapidated track, which costs the Federal Government over N24bn to fix. But this is a dashed hope as only the single train resumes operation after three years of inactivity. The train still suffers intermittent breakdowns.

The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, after undertaking a visit to some agencies under the ministry, including the Nigerian Railway Corporation, shocked his audience when he declared that he did not know a functional train exists in Nigeria.

Amaechi speaks the minds of many people who have never been on a train within the country.

However, trains still run in Nigeria, although they are irregular and unattractive.

Investigations show that a few trains are available mainly for short-trip excursions or mass transit by peasant farmers, rural traders, and junior workers.

The corporation recently deployed its latest refurbished rolling stock in the weekly Lagos-Kano route. This attracted several curious passengers, some of whom shared their experiences with our correspondent.

Alimah Omodele, a self-employed lady, is on a visit to Ilorin. She is encouraged by her mother-in-law, who resides in Ilorin, the Kwara state capital, to travel by train.

She says, “My mother-in-law told me it would be fun and promised to pick me up at the railway station in Ilorin when we arrive. But I’ve not seen any fun except the AC.”

Omodele is unsure about taking the train back to Lagos, saying she is not impressed.

Yomi Goncalves, a student of the Federal Technology Minna, pays N3,000 to secure a seat in the first-class section of the Lagos-Kano train. He is happy, saving about N1,000 by not using the road travel option. But he has to endure spending more hours on the train. It is his first experience on the train, and he hopes to retake it if it will be regular and timely.

However, an employee of the Nigerian Navy, Yakubu Abdullahi, who is heading for Zaria in Kaduna State for a medical checkup, cannot hide his disappointment with the first-class sleeper coach. “What I saw on the NRC website fascinated me. It indicated that the train was next to the airplane experience. But I’m seeing a different thing now. The AC, the toilet, the bedding, and the whole place look old-fashioned and unattractive. It is not worth my N6,050.”

Mr. Kayode Agboola is from Offa in Kwara State. After paying him a visit to Lagos, his mother traveled to Kano and opted for the train.

“When I heard about the train going up North, I decided my mum should take it, and she agreed because it is cheaper and safer,” he says.

Mr. Mike Itseghosimhe, a health consultant, says it is his sixth trip on the Lagos-Kano train in the last year. To him, it has been a mixed feeling of excitement and frustration.

The excitement, for instance, comes from the opportunity to relax maximally and the fascination of touring several cities and villages along the Lagos-Kano railway in one journey without leaving one’s seat on the train.

He, however, recalls one nasty experience when a coach was detached from a train in motion in a remote village near Offa. It caused a delay of about 24 hours, he says.

“Sometimes, the gas supply to the AC on the train will be cut off; the train is delayed at the departure, affecting its arrival. And no announcement or information is given. They leave everyone in the dark,” says Itseghosimhe.

The railway development began in Nigeria with a 32km line of 1067mm gauge from Iddo (Lagos) to Ota (Ogun). This was 1901, and it extended to Ibadan, a distance of 193km, according to ‘Facts and Figures,’ a handbook produced by the NRC in 2006.

“Subsequently, railway construction experienced continual extension from Ibadan to Jebba (295km) 1901-1910; Kano–Baro (562km), 1907-1911; Jebba–Minna (252km), 1909-1915; Port-Harcourt-Enugu (243km), 1914-1916; and Kafanchan-Jos (17 km), 1922–1927,” it states.

For 31 years, from 1927 to 1958, there was no railway development. The construction of the Kafanchan-Bauchi rail line (238km) from 1958 to 1961 and the Bauchi-Maiduguri line (302km) from 1961–1964 brought the total rail route of the Nigerian railway network to 3,505km.

Many Nigerians were excited by the establishment of the NRC in 1955 with an Act of Parliament. Indeed, the corporation is credited with performing reasonably well between 1955 and 1979.

Analysts also credit the Nigerian railway as pivotal in increasing the tempo of commercial activities in the many towns along the rail routes. It has also boosted inter-ethnic marriages, acquisition of new dressing habits, food, and languages, and caused the emergence of mega towns referred to as railway towns such as Lagos, Umuahia, Zaria, Kano, Kafanchan, Jos, Enugu, Aba, and Port Harcourt.

However, a steady decline was said to have crept into its operation in the late 1970s. According to experts, this became worse with the systemic decay of the corporation’s entire infrastructure and manpower.

For instance, the corporation's passenger and freight traffic statistics show that in 1964 the NRC carried 11,288,000 passengers and 2,960,000 tonnes of freight. Ten years later, the figures dropped to 4,342,000 and 1,098,000, respectively.

Before the rot set in, a former President of the Nigeria Union of Railway Workers, Mr. Ado Maigoro, recalls, “In those good old days of the railway, we had trains moving daily from Lagos to Kano; Kano to Lagos: Port Harcourt to Kano; Kano to Port Harcourt and Jos to Port Harcourt; while Lagos-Maiduguri train ran four times weekly, apart from the mass transit in Lagos and other towns.”

Although successive governments have shown concerns about the parlous state of the nation’s railway system by allocating funds to turn around this all-important transport mode, analysts lament that this has not translated to the desirable improved train services.

They attribute this to a lack of maintenance, policy inconsistency, corruption, management inefficiency, and inadequate marketing.

In the late 1970s, the military regime headed by Olusegun Obasanjo had to invite the Rail India Technical and Economic Services to manage the NRC. The Indian experts met only 20 functional locomotive engines in the system. By the time they were leaving in the early 1980s, the number had increased to 173.

Maigoro says, “The Indians did not perform any magic. They succeeded only because they received adequate government funds to make things right. Even now, the railway needs adequate funding to replace and repair obsolete rolling stock.”

The administration of the late Gen. Sani Abacha must have heeded Maigoro’s advice when it awarded a $528m railway contract in 1995 to the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation for the rehabilitation of rail infrastructure, supply of 50 locomotives and other rolling stocks as well as the training of critical NRC personnel.

Although this project is not listed among the N1.68tn railway contracts currently under probe by the House of Representatives, the continued breakdown of the supplied locos and the furore generated by the project's outcome almost led to a diplomatic row between Nigeria and China.

The CCECC’s alleged shoddy execution of that contract became terrible publicity for the company. For instance, a public affairs analyst, Dr Mutali Musa, in a report, urged Amaechi to avoid the CCECC if he must move the railway forward.

However, other analysts have argued that the same company is currently handling the construction of a light rail along the CMS-Mile 2-Okokomaiko route for the Lagos State Government.

The Director of Public Transport, Lagos Area Metropolitan Transport Authority, Mr. Gbenga Dairo, says the CCECC has successfully executed several road projects in many parts of the country and is involved in other more complex railway projects in and outside Nigeria. So far, the firm has not been found wanting in the Lagos light rail project.

So, what went wrong between the Chinese company and the Abacha regime concerning the N52bn NRC revival project remains mysterious.

The civilian administration of Obasanjo was applauded when it conceived the idea of a 25-year strategic vision for the railway in 2002. This was meant to be a systematic development of the railway system. It was designed to provide a global framework and benchmark for rail expansion and modernization for over 8,000 kilometres, linking all state capitals, significant centres, and industrial areas in the country. And the government reportedly paid a princely sum to a panel that delivered the package.

A report by an author and journalist, Tokunbo Oloruntola, describes it as an ambitious plan for the nation’s railway expansion projects whose funds are expected to be sourced from the private sector and multi-lateral bodies.

“Among others, it will involve the conversion of the nation’s narrow gauge rail tracks to a standard gauge and the construction of new 4,984 kilometres of rail lines to link the West and East of the country,” the report states.

However, at the twilight of that administration (November 28, 2006), Obasanjo inaugurated the construction of a new Lagos-Kano standard gauge line, spanning 1,315km at the Kajola Railway Station, Ogun State. The contract was awarded to the CCECC.

The Umar Yara’adua administration later abandoned the project after the Chinese firm had pocketed the sum of $250m, the initial payment made by the government for the job.

Giving reasons for suspending the project, an erstwhile Minister of Transport, Ibrahim Bio, says, “The Chinese government was able to stimulate the interest of the Federal Government by proposing to give a soft loan of $2.5bn, which attracted the government. When we went in for it, they retracted and said they only had $500m and that we should source the balance from Chinese banks at their prevailing interest rates.”

Another project, a new Port Harcourt-Maiduguri rail line, was awarded to a Korean firm for $10bn then. But it was never executed.

The appointment of Alhaji Waziri Muhammed as the NRC chairman in 2001, an influential and wealthy member of trustees of the then ruling party, the People’s Democratic Party, by the Obasanjo administration brought some hope to the industry.

Waziri was passionate about the railway and wanted its transformation to be accelerated. He took the risk of taking a nationwide tour on the train to get firsthand information on the state of railway facilities and get the support of state governments, irrespective of their party affiliations. He was said to have given the railway a new hope, bringing the transport mode to the national limelight.

His death in the Bellview plane crash on October 22, 2005, literally halted the development programs lined up for the Nigerian railway, according to Maigoro.

Romanian railway experts came after the Indians and were reportedly paid $17m to supply wagons and workshop equipment. The provided facilities are still reportedly gathering dust at the NRC workshop in Lagos, uninstalled, and may never be installed due to what an official calls manual blunder.

The Goodluck Jonathan administration also gave considerable attention to the railway, making it one of the cardinal points of its Transformation Agenda. It received funds in the essence of N1tn, which is currently under investigation by the House of Representatives.

For instance, 25 new locomotives purchased by the Federal Government from General Electric Transportation South America at N114bn were delivered to the NRC between February and October 2010 and deployed to boost train services across the country’s railway routes.

However, according to the Secretary General of the NUR, Mr. Segun Esan, a recent survey of all the fit locos at the corporation shows that less than 30 engines are still standing.

Besides the locomotives, 366 coaches and wagons were refurbished for the NRC’s use.

It also procured two sets of diesel multiple units (trains) with a capacity for 640 passengers and six modern air-conditioned coaches with a seating capacity of 68 passengers each.

As a follow-up to the supply of locomotives, GE also got the offer to assemble 200 locomotives for the NRC over ten years at a plant to be established in the country. It is, however, not clear if the project has taken off.

The Managing Director of the NRC, Mr. Adeseyi Sijuade, who admits the industry still suffers from the government's criminal neglect of over two decades, says the corporation has had to look inwards to bring back some grounded rolling stocks by cannibalization.

He says, “The railway sector is one sector that has benefited from the program (SURE-P of the Jonathan administration). Without the SURE-P intervention, there was no way the Lagos to Kano line would have been completed in 2012.”

In 2013, the Jonathan administration promised to invest N1.6tn in the railway in two years. About 15 different railway projects were pencilled down for completion by 2015.

And 13 projects were listed for attention in the capital projects of critical federal ministries for that year.

Although the old Lagos-Kano rail line was inaugurated on December 21, 2012, after its rehabilitation, it received a vote of N1.4bn in the 2013 budget for maintenance purposes. The breakdown shows that the Lagos-Jebba and Jebba-Kano ends got N700m each.

The rehabilitation of the narrow gauge Port Harcourt-Maiduguri line (an ongoing project then) was allocated N67bn; it approved N225bn for the construction of a rail line from Aba to Ajaokuta, linking Enugu, Asaba and Agbor. The government also pledged an initial sum of N48bn to construct the 360km rail line from Ajaokuta to Abuja through Jakura and Baro.

Similarly, the government voted N5bn for the commencement of the East-West rail line construction, expected from Lagos to Calabar.

Another long stretch of rail line, 650km, received N97bn. It is a standard gauge line to cover Lagos, Ife, Ilesha, Owo, Benin, Onitsha and Enugu.

It indicated that about N50.9bn would be spent constructing a 604km rail line linking Zaria-Kaura Namoda-Sokoto and Ilela.

The Abuja mass transit trains, Lot 1 & 2 projects, got N85.7bn, while the construction of the Abuja light rail received N66.3bn.

Six stations being constructed between Itakpe and Warri were allocated N475.7bn.

However, in its analysis of the development projects, the Center for Social Justice faults the allocation of funds. For instance, it notes a difference of over 50 percent between what was proposed in the Transformation Agenda for the railway in 2013 and the amount prepared for this in that year’s budget.

It also gives examples of the government's performance in executing railway projects.

It states, “The rail track rehabilitation from Lagos to Jebba commenced in October 2009 and was expected to end in October 2010 at a cost of N12.29bn. There was a time overrun, but despite the new completion time of July 2011, as of September 2011, only 90 percent of the rehabilitation had been completed.”

It recalls that N1.09bn was allocated to the project in the 2011 budget; N626.69m was released, but only N195.47m was utilized at the end of the third quarter 2011.

“It was listed in the 2013 budget, which suggests that it will not be completed in 2012. The impact of inadequate releases and poor utilization of released funds on this project, as in others, informs poor implementation, leading to time and likely cost overruns, which unduly inflates the cost of projects.”

Similarly, CSJ recalls that the Jebba-Kano track rehabilitation commenced in December 2009 and was expected to end in February 2012.

It says, “N7.6bn has been committed to the project since inception and had N2bn allocation in 2011 budget with N1.6bn released as at the end of the third quarter of 2011, achieving only 67 percent level of completion.

“A time overrun is noticed in this project, which was supposed to have ended in February 2012 but still receiving budgetary allocation in 2013.”

One of that year’s budget projects was constructing a new Lagos-Ibadan rail line on standard gauge. It received a vote of N8.6bn. The plan is to take the new line to Kano. The contract for the new Lagos-Ibadan line was later awarded to the CCECC at $1.5bn. Construction work has, however, yet to commence.

The government also provided N3.56bn in the year’s budget to complete the Abuja-Kaduna rail line. A total sum of N243bn was voted for the project under the Transformation Agenda.

In 2014, the Federal Government and the China Railway Construction Corporation Limited signed an $11.9bn contract to build a coastal 22-stop railway stretching for 1,402km, linking Lagos to Calabar with a maximum speed of 120km/hour. It is said to be China’s single largest overseas contract.

But the announcement did not elicit the desired applause and excitement from the citizens, according to a public affairs analyst, Akinwumi Adedoyin, while contributing to an online report on the project published by ‘Economic Confidential.’

He says, “Nigerians have become immune to celebrating further announcements of activities aimed at the resuscitation of the rail transport due to disappointments in the past.

“Railway transportation in other parts of the world contributes immensely towards attaining economic and social goals, but for a long time, that has not been the case for Nigeria as the sector suffers from monumental neglect and corruption.”

Renowned economists, including Dr. Ayo Teriba and Prof. Pat Utomi, express worry about the deplorable state of the Nigerian railway despite the vast sums reportedly sunk into several projects meant to improve the system.

They wonder why elected leaders and government appointees have chosen to play politics with an all-important infrastructural facility like the railway that should have been the springboard for the transformation of the economy.

Teriba says no nation with the population of Nigeria can ever hope to attain economic development without an efficient railway system.

He expects the government “to do to its rail transport sector what it has beneficially done to its telecommunications sector, and has recently done to its power sector; namely, end government monopoly, carve out the country into zones and allow private firms to bid for the rights to build and operate rail lines under the oversight of a new regulatory body. Not just rail, but pipelines, gas, and refineries.

“If these are successfully done, manufacturing should be expected to become spontaneously competitive, and manufacturing exports should grow. Not just manufacturing will benefit. All other sectors will benefit from the competitiveness and scale that functioning cargo rail transport system will afford.”

The President of the African Railway Workers’ Union, Mr. Raphael Okoro, blames the Federal Ministry of Transport for preparing contract terms and executing the execution without relevant experts from the NRC.

“All railway contracts are initiated and executed by the Ministry of Transport. For instance, you go to purchase railway locomotives and leave out NRC engineers. Lack of proper monitoring has been largely responsible for the failure of many railway projects,” he says.

The Secretary of NUR, Segun Esan, also says, “As a union, we’re not in the know-how the railway rehabilitation package is in place. However, whenever we notice something is wrong when executing any project, we raise a query through the NRC management.

“There is a need for the government to always carry the workers along in the planning and executing vital railway projects.”

Like Okoro, Esan urges the government to constitute a high-powered team of respected railway experts, trusted opinion leaders, human rights lawyers, and workers’ leaders who will be saddled with the task of assessing railway project proposals and monitoring the execution of the job.

The multi-billionaire light rail project of the Lagos State Government cannot be operated unless the Railway Act of 1955 is repealed or amended. This Act gives the NRC the exclusive right to run railway services in Nigeria. A bill seeking an amendment to the Act has reportedly undergone the second reading at the Senate, many years after the Executive sent it there.

Okoro advises the state governors across the six regions in Nigeria to pool resources together to establish a regional railway using the Pubic Private Partnership vehicle for effective delivery and management. For instance, he advises that the Southwest governments can fund the new Lagos-Ibadan rail line since the line will pass through states in this region.

The governors are also urged to lobby the National Assembly to speed up the Railway Act amendment process.

 Copyright PUNCH - 2016.

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