About 14 major cities in the southern and northern part of the country are to be linked as the Federal Government kickstarted a $3 billion rehabilitation and reconstruction of the Eastern Railway line.
According to reports, the rail line is expected to move from Bonny Ports to Port Harcourt in Rivers State and when completed would connect Rivers, Abia, Imo, Enugu, Ebonyi, Anambra, Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau, Kaduna, Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe and Borno States by rail.
President Muhammadu Buhari, while speaking at the virtual flag-off of the project on Wednesday, said, “The contract has the objective of resuscitating the once vibrant railway transportation in the eastern corridor of the country.”
The project, which marks the latest step in an ambitious plan to create a nationwide rail network intended to help accelerate Nigeria’s economic diversification plan away from crude oil, will involve the revamping of a dilapidated 1,443-kilometer (897-mile) line that starts from the southeastern oil hub of Port Harcourt and terminates at the northeastern city of Maiduguri.
The project, which will see the South Eastern states connected to the rail line, will be executed by the Nigerian subsidiary of state-owned China Civil Engineering Construction Corp (CCECC) as the main contractor.
The Minister for Transportation, Rotimi Amechi, in his remarks at the ceremony said the Federal Government is expected to provide about 15% of the $3 billion costs of the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri rail line while the outstanding balance will be coming from a syndicate of Chinese financiers.
Note that the flag-off of this ambitious project by the Federal Government would come as a huge relief to agitators from the region who complained about being left behind in the current administration’s railway modernization projects as rail projects are going on in other regions and none had taken off in the region.
The federal government has previously completed the Abuja-Kaduna rail line and Lagos-Ibadan rail line with work on a $1.8 billion line that will link the northern trading hub of Kano to the town of Maradi in neighbouring Niger commencing last month.
