9 November 2009
editorial
Lagos — The Nigerian Railways recently acquired 25 locomotives to replace obsolete ones. This is part of the Government's efforts to resuscitate the railway infrastructure in the country. It was also announced that N131 billion has been voted for both the rehabilitation project and the supply and installation of one wheel lathe machine at N281.6bn. The objective of government is to reduce pressure on roads, which currently accounts for 94 per cent of all transportation in Nigeria.
These are laudable efforts in redressing the huge imbalance in our transport infrastructure. The functional railway system at the country's independence is dead. Today, the country's haulage and transportation system are a nightmare because the major logistics for transportation of goods and services across the country are trailers and tankers which have ruined the roads and have catapulted transportation and production costs.
The roads are indeed over-used. Besides serving 94 per cent of the country's transporation, logistics experts say that over 30 per cent of the seven million vehicles that ply Nigerian roads are trucks, tankers and other heavy vehicles. A good railway system would have spared the roads this heavy burden and the numerous automobile accidents caused by the heavy vehicles.
In the recent past, or at least pre or post independence, the railway system was used for the transportation of principal commodities including groundnuts, groundnut cake, groundnut oil, palm produce, cotton, cement, sugar, salt, petroleum products, tin, columbite, and hides and skins. In 1974/75, the railways carried a total of 9,019,000 passengers and 1.8 million tonnes of freight. And presently, it would have served the country well in the transportation of petroleum products and the country's large imports.
It is therefore difficult to understand that such a major contributor to our economic development, which is widely used across the world, would be so extinct in Nigeria that many youths only see trains on rail tracks in books and in films.
Poor corporate governance inflicted on the management of NRC by successive Nigerian governments obviously killed the once prestigious railway corporation. Over time some attempts have been made to revive the system, but with nothing to show for the efforts, it would appear that the funds were diverted into some bottomless pit.
So the present injection of funds to rehabilitate and modernise at both state and federal levels would only be welcome if they truly revive the dead railway system.
Nigeria needs an efficient and robust rail system to ease transportation of people and goods across its wide landmass. It is even a shame that while other nations have developed and are using bullet trains all Nigeria can boast of are outdated kilometres of narrow-gauge single track lines.
The stalling of the contract between the country and a Chinese engineering firm to resuscitate part of its dilapidated railway system was regrettable. Now that we have gone back to it, government should make this attempt a marked departure from the failed attempts of the past.
It is relieving to note that at last the $875 million contract has been signed by Transport Minister Ibrahim Isa Bio and the managing director of the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation, Zhou Tianxiang for the first phase of the country's railway modernisation plans. As part of the deal, a railway track will be rebuilt between the administrative capital Abuja and the northern city of Kaduna - a distance of roughly 200 kilometres (125 miles) - over the next three years.
But we believe that what will make a real difference is the plan to reconstruct a 1,315-kilometre track between Lagos and Kano.
Considering the enormous benefits of a functional railway system to the much desired growth of the economy, there should be no excuse for another round of failure.
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