The Minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi says the repeated breakdown of the Abuja-Kaduna trains is as a result of lack of spare parts from China.
The minister said this after an inspection of the Lagos Ibadan rail project. According to Amaechi, the inspection was necessary to ensure that little details pending had been seen to by the contractors.
The Minister who disclosed that President Buhari had approved money for purchase of spare parts said some of the spare parts purchased for the Lagos- Ibadan rail will be deployed to Kaduna to fix the problem.
“The issue with the break down of the Kaduna-Abuja train is down to lack of maintenance which is attributable to a lack of spare parts from China. We have written to Mr President on this issue and he has graciously approved the purchase of spare parts for the Lagos-Ibadan trains. Very soon, the Chinese people will supply us with enough spare parts for the Lagos-Ibadan rail. By the time they do that, we will be forced to use some of these spare parts for the Kaduna-Abuja trains and hopefully, the issue of incessant breakdown of the trains will be resolved”.
Commenting on the traffic on the Lagos Passenger trains since the commissioning, the minister said patronage is good and on the increase.
ⁿOn the Lagos-Ibadan trains, 42,000 passengers were moved in June. We expect the figured to increase in the coming months because if we can move 42,000 in the month that we started, then the figures will increase as more people become aware of the train services between Lagos and Ibadan.”
Speaking about passenger demand for more trains and coaches as well as an increase in the number of trips on that route, the minister said he had given a directive to scale up from four to eight subject to observing the signaling efficiency for six months.
He called on Nigerian contractors interested in handling railway projects to ensure they have the competence and the pre-requisite requirements for the Jobs before applying to avoid stalling the process.
Rotimi Amaechi commended TEAM ,the supervisors of the project as well as the CCECC for the quality of work done in delivering the project.
Passengers eating for the train at the Ibadan station expressed joy that they can now access the train services and expressed satisfaction with the service.
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