Eastern railway corridor project not feasible — FG

The Federal Government on Wednesday said it would not be able to complete the narrow-gauge Eastern railway corridor before the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), leaves office in May 2023.

This is because the foreign loans required to fund the project are no longer available, it said.

“Now, the truth of the matter is that if there was a promise to deliver this line before the end of this administration, this promise is no longer feasible because…funding has been a major challenge for this project,” the Minister of Transportation, Mu’azu Sambo, told State House Correspondents at the end of this week’s Federal Executive Council meeting at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The PUNCH reports that in April 2022, the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation commenced construction of the 2044.1km Port Harcourt-Maiduguri narrow gauge railway project.

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The project, with an execution budget of $3bn, will link states in southern Nigeria to the north through the eastern states.

The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, who inspected the commencement of work said the project will stimulate economic activities in the 14 states it traverses, adding that the laying of rail tracks may reach the Enugu State capital by September 2022.
He said that the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri line will be delivered before the end of the Buhari regime.

But presenting updates at the post-FEC briefing on Wednesday, Sambo said the project had hit a financial brickwall as the funds to drive its completion are not forthcoming.

He said “Now, the eastern line is the line from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri. It has been segmented in such a way that the first part of the work covers from Port Harcourt to Enugu.

“Now, the truth of the matter is that if there was a promise to deliver this line before the end of this administration, this promise is no longer feasible because, when the contract was approved, it was approved on the premise that 85 percent will be funded through foreign loan, while 15 percent will be the counterpart funding for the national budget.

“Since that approval, we have not been able to obtain that 85 percent foreign loans for this project. We have been funding it through the national budget on the bases of the 15 percent counterpart funding of the federal government. And therefore, funding has been a major challenge for this project.”

Details shortly…