The Senate and House of Representatives Committee on Land Transport, has expressed their commitment to assist the development of rail transport in Nigeria.
The chairman of the Senate Committee on Land Transport, Olugbenga Ashafa, said that in line with the NASS’ responsibility of carrying out its oversight functions, the committee decided to have a tour of the railway infrastructure in Nigeria as a way of doing “on-the-spot research” having received recommendations from the minister of transport and the managing director of the NRC on ways to improve rail transport in the country.
“Having had the benefit of seeing the recommendation by the minister of transport and the managing director of the NRC, it is now imperative that we conduct our own on-the-spot research on the papers submitted to us. It is obvious that we are clearly not anywhere close to where we should be in terms of railway transportation. Thankfully the budget for rail this year has been significantly increased to N90.43 million as proposed by President Muhammadu Buhari.
“However, the amount for land transport, in relation to the NRC, is only N4.5 billion. I do not know what this can do because the bulk of that fund would be expended on personnel alone as the NRC has 9,700 staff. Most countries have gone beyond the standard gauge to speed rail system as we have in China. Moving our rail line up from the single to standard gauge is now very imperative.” he said.
