Rail Lagos

Editorial

The 37-kilometre Agbado-Lagos Marina rail Red Line, which Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu flagged off on April 15, should reduce commuting stress level; and further boost the status of Lagos as Nigeria’s chief economic refuge.

With the sister 27-kilometre Blue Line, running from Okokomaiko to the Marina (though only the Mile 2-Marina stretch will crack into life), Lagos appears on course, by fourth quarter 2021, to live its dream of inter-modal transportation, in which rail, with its capacity to move millions of commuters daily, would play a dominant role.  It’s a welcome prospect that should tingle, with excitement, the long-suffering commuters of Lagos.

Besides, rail is the long missing link to trigger the Lagos competitive spark, when compared to megacity African cousins like Johannesburg, South Africa; and Cairo, Egypt, in terms of trainable youth, new jobs, and fresh local and foreign investments.

Yet, if the state kept to its December 2021 promise, to deliver both the Blue and Red lines, it would have come after 18 years of great expectations — Governor Bola Tinubu first announced the rail plans in December 2003.  But if you date it back to July 16, 1983, when Governor Lateef Jakande flagged off the aborted Lagos Metro Line, it would have come after 38 years!

During this period, commuting stress had greatly worsened; thrusting, into the mix, the ultra-dangerous Okada shuttle; thus marking up the woes that come with the roaring population, which with fitting infrastructure, powers the economy of a megacity.

That means the Sanwo-Olu government has a zero margin of error, on the 2021 delivery date.  But it has started well by giving compensatory cheques to some of the landlords and tenants whose businesses and property would yield to the project’s right-of-way.

It is also a thing of cheer that the government has already started work on the Ikeja Overpass (one of the six planned) — a key safety component of the Red Line; by that shutting down, for 15 months, of Adegbola Street, Ikeja, from April 11.  But everything should be done to ease commuters’ pains during this construction period.

Indeed, the Lagos Urban Rail Network (LURN), driven by the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA), under a 30-year master plan conceived under the Tinubu governorship, was quite revolutionary, with its many colour codes.

The Blue Line (Okokomaiko to Lagos Marina), Red Line (Agbado to Lagos Marina: through Iddo and Murtala Muhammed International Airport), Brown Line (Mile 12 to the Marina), Purple Line (Redeemed Camp to Ojo), Orange Line (Ikeja to Agbowa, after Ikorodu), Green Line (Marina to Lekki) and Yellow Line (Otta to Iddo) were proposed rail networks bifurcating the state’s great urban population centres, including suburbs linking Lagos to border settlements in Ogun State and deep into rural Lagos, in the Ikorodu-Epe axis.

But the missing link was a hostile Federal Government, particularly under President Olusegun Obasanjo that, for more political than economic reasons, insisted on the legalism of Nigeria Railway Corporation, NRC’s exclusive right-of-way, on rail corridors nationwide.  That that barrier has come crashing down, under President Muhammadu Buhari (who ironically as military Head of State stalled the Lagos Metroline), shows the common sense of federal-state cooperation and collaboration for citizen good.  That trend should continue.

Indeed, the beauty of such cooperation is clear from the Red Line.  Aside from the ancillary infrastructure of a few own exclusive stations and overpass projects for vehicular and pedestrian safety, it shares the standard gauge rail tracks from Agbado to Ebute-Meta with the Federal Government’s Lagos-Ibadan-Kano rail.

LAMATA’s addition to those tracks would only be from Ebute-Meta to CMS.  That was a marked difference from the virtual federal-Lagos war that greeted the wholesale development of the Blue Line, when Governor Fashola started its construction.

It is good NRC and LAMATA would enjoy the economy of scale from shared investments, shared facilities, shared profit and shared prosperity, if the business is well run.  It is essential that business is well run.  Though it has a booming and ready market, sustainable with the Lagos soaring population and has the prospect of powering new jobs, the rail projects, federal and Lagos, are a product of loans, which must be promptly paid, to stave off any debt burden for the future generation.

Sanwo-Olu’s return to the rail activism of the Babatunde Fashola years, which got considerably slowed down by the Akinwunmi Ambode four-year governorship, is commendable.  No matter his constraints, Governor Ambode ought to have leveraged federal power, which coincided with his governorship take-over date, to do much more for Rail Lagos.

Both Tinubu and Fashola got it all started, despite fierce federal opposition, no thanks  to bad politics.  That is why Sanwo-Olu, having restarted the programme, must ensure the 2021 delivery date is sacrosanct.  A well-run Blue and Red lines would provide the income stream and collateral for further credit, to power the other rail lines to life.  Without rail criss-crossing Lagos, it is doubtful if it would ever be a competitive megacity.

But even as Lagos readies for a new and exciting rail epoch, safety must be a conscious and prominent part of the deal.  Work on the Cairo Metro Line 1 started in 1982, a year ahead of the doomed Lagos Metro Line flag-off of 1983.  That phase was completed in 1989.  But Egypt has logged frightful rail accidents over the years, consuming hundreds of commuter lives.

Everything must be done to ensure Rail Lagos escapes such frightening records.