Minister succumbs to Senators’ view, says work on Lagos-Ibadan railway too slow
Barely one month after the Minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi chided a set of federal lawmakers led by Lagos Senator, Chief Gbenga Ashafa for saying that the Lagos-Ibadan standard railway may not be ready by year end, he has come to terms, saying level of progress is unsatisfactory after all.
Senator Ashafa had argued during an oversight function visit that he doubts if the delivery date of December 2018 will be feasible from the speed of work on ground.
However, Amaechi linked his fears on the slow pace of work which he also traced to the rains even though the handling contractor, China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), had assured him that work would speed up once the rains abated.
Explaining more on the pace of work during an inspection this week, Amaechi made it clear that “I am not satisfied. But they have a reason. The problem is the rain. The work is progressing. You will agree with us that we are progressing. The problem is the rain. There is no way they would have gone extra with the rains.
“At the meeting, they agreed that now that the rains are stopping, there will be improvement. Their fear, however, is that in the next one or two weeks, the rains may come but immediately after that, the work will pick up faster. One and a half years is the original time for the construction of the stations but we have insisted that they will finish it before December.”
The minister decried further that “CCECC has been able to lay 12km, as against the 1.3km that was laid the last time we visited. We are still not impressed with the level of work. Their argument is that the track laying is not the problem as they can lay as many tracks as possible any day. They said the problem is earthwork. They said if the rains stopped, they could conclude the earthwork which is at 90 per cent.
“The remaining 10 per cent is between Iju to Ajaokuta. They said if the rains stopped, they would finish the remaining 10 per cent faster. They also said by the end of September, they would have finished all the bridges between Iju and Ajeokuta but we are pushing that the contract is between Ebute Meta and Ibadan and should be finished by December.”
There has been a growing anger on why majority of works on rail system are tilted towards West-North while nothing is happening on the South-North (Port Harcourt to Maiduguri). Besides, nothing has been heard on the Lagos-Calabar rail which was included into the 2017 budget after a heated argument.
