The Minister of Transportation, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, has said that one-third of the proposed Kano-Kaduna rail project will be funded from national advancements of the Ministry’s budget.
The Minister who made this known today when he embarked on another inspection tour barely a week after his last visit, stated that due to the processes involved in accessing loans, the Ministry will proceed with the Ibadan-Kano rail project from Kano end, pending when the loan is granted.
Speaking on readiness for the commissioning, Amaechi said: “for the first time, we stopped in all the stations, that issue of platforms and others have been resolved and what you really need at a terminal, I believe is to get in and get out and that has been achieved”.
Speaking further: “We started from Apapa down to Ibadan and there’s no single station that you would say that we couldn’t get down on the platform which is critical”. “What we need could be sanitary facilities, toilet facilities; a place to enable you wash your hands amongst others”, he added.
According to him, “is not because the President will commission every station but because we want to make sure that as soon as they commission, then the trains will have to drop and pick passengers from the stations. No longer the make shifting they are doing now”.
Speaking earlier in an interview with Journalists, the Honourable Minister of Information and Culture, Alh. Lai Mohammed, stated that he was very impressed and that the project remains one of the concrete evidence of the present administration’s achievements, adding that no criticism can deflate the landmark achievement.
The Honourable Minister was accommpanied on the inspection by the Permanent Secretary , Federal Ministry of Transportation, Dr. Magdalene Ajani, Directors if the Ministry, Chairman, Nigeria Railway Corporation , Alhassan Ibrahim Musa, Managing Director, NRC, Fidet Okhiria, Management of the Technics Engineering Architectural Marketing (TEAM) among others.
Eric Ojiekwe
D (PPR)
May 30, 2021
