The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, says the Federal Government is negotiating a loan for the extension of the railway line from Ibadan to Kaduna.
He said this while speaking as the guest lecturer at the annual Public lecture of the Department of Economics hosted by the University of Lagos on Friday.
He said the Kaduna to Kano part of the railway construction had commenced, adding that finance is a major challenge in railway construction.
“From the budget, we are now constructing Kaduna-Kano rail line while still negotiating the loan for Ibadan to Kaduna, because the plan is Lagos to Kano,” he said.
He explained that the Federal Government has laid out plans for the construction of Lagos-Calabar at $11.1 billion, Ibadan-Kano at $5.3 billion for single track, Port Harcourt-Maiduguri at $3.02bn for reconstruction of narrow guage and $12 to $13bn for standard gauge approved by the President with additional spurs.
He added that Abuja-Itakpe was constructed with $3.9 billion in addition to the central line while the Lagos-Ibadan railway costs $2 billion.
Amaechi complained that railway construction was often viewed with ethnic bias when the economy should be the deciding factor for such developments.
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He said, “Virtually everything we do involves transportation. It is a key element in driving development of economies all over the world, and it creates possibilities for other sectors. Therefore, you can’t even create employment if you don’t create logistics.
“Nigerians are too ethnically conscious. You think first as your ethnicity before you think as a Nigerian. We have very few Nigerians, and ethnicity is putting pressure on the economics of railway construction.
“The Yoruba man is happy that we have done Lagos-Ibadan; the moment you do railway up to Enugu, the Igbo man would be happy. I call it the politicization of railway construction.
“Railway is fuelled by economic activities, it’s not fuelled by tribe. What determines a railway construction is economics, how many tons of cargo can be conveyed.”
