Daily Independent (Lagos)
Paul Arhewe (with Agency Report)
31 October 2008
Lagos — Nigeria has suspended the controversial $8.3 billion (about N979.4 billion) contract awarded to a Chinese firm to upgrade its railway system, according to officials in Abuja.
A senior aide in Aso Rock confirmed that the contract awarded to the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) in 2006 has been suspended so the government could review it.
The government informed the company of the development in a letter dated October 3, CCECC representative, Chin Hong Bing, told a Parliamentary Committee.
While Nigeria had only paid $250 million of the cost, Bing said his firm had made some progress on the 1,315-kilometre Lagos-Kano double track standard gauge, the first phase of the modernisation project expected to last 25 years.
The media has criticised the Chinese firm for the slow pace of work at the site.
The government of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, which signed the deal, has also been accused of inflating its cost.
Nigeria's railways, like much of the rest of the country's infrastructure, has slowly fallen into disrepair.
It has a network of 3,505 kilometres of narrow-gauge single track lines, covering nine of the 36 states.
Most of its 200 locomotives, however, broke down long ago.
The only passenger service still operating takes two hours to link central Lagos, the commercial capital, with Ijoko, a small commuter town in Ogun State, less than 30 kilometres away.
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