With much ground yet to be covered, meeting the December 2018 deadline for the delivery of the Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge rail line remains shaky, writes ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE
Fifteen months. That is what is left for the China Civil Engineering Construction Company (CCECC) to deliver the $1.5 billion Lagos – Ibadan Standard Gauge rail line.
The project, which was flagged off by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (then as Acting President), on March 7, 2017, is Lot II of the railway modernisation contract for the Lagos- Kano standard gauge.
The 184-kilometre standard gauge rail line is jointly funded by the Federal Government and the China Exim Bank. China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC), a subsidiary of the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), is the contractor.
The proposed railway projects, which the Lagos-Ibadan speed train track laying is part of, will create over 500,000 jobs and aid movement of 3.2m tons of cargoes yearly, Prof Osinbajo had said.
Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo performed the ground breaking of the Lagos-Kano standard gauge in 2006, without the work being done. That era appeared to have gone forever, as the Minister of Transportation, Hon. Rotimi Amaechi, assured of President Muhammadu Buhari’s commitment to delivering the project within his first term.
“It is the intention of Mr. President to ride on the speed train and open same for commercial activity by December 2018,” Amaechi said at the inaugural meeting of the Project Implementation Steering Committee meeting in April.
The committee, which comprises top officials of the Federal Ministry of Transportation, representatives of the Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states, the contractor and consultants, is headed by the Minister, who also insisted that the committee holds its meeting monthly at the CCECC’s site office in Lagos.
The task of achieving the Presidential Order, conveyed by Amaechi, fell on the CCECC’s chief project coordinator, Mr Leo Yin, who has but 457 days to achieve the feat.
Can this be done? At the project’s implementation meeting, the seventh in the series last Tuesday, Yin said this would be possible only if other stakeholders cooperated.
His enthusiasm sprang from the project’s pace, which, according to him, is in tandem with the Federal Ministry of Transportation’s work plan.
Yin said the CCECC was committed to meeting the deadline for the delivery of project. But its speed would be impeded by the slow pace of others.
He raised similar fears at the September meeting, where a number of challenges that might affect the timeline, were identified, and recommendations given. It does appear some of the challenges, like a sore thumb, are still festering. What are they?
Challenges
Rain, of course, is a major issue. This is because of the tropical terrain. According to the Chinese, the project has to pause to allow the rain to subside as much of the terrain appeared difficult to access due to unprecedented rise in water level on the right of way.
But the more challenging, it would seem, remained securing the right the right of way itself. A large tranche of the right of way, particularly between Ogun and Oyo, is still unacquired.
In most cases, no one has even been appointed by the governments of those states or their agencies to carry out requisite topographic survey, neither has any charting been done to achieve a secured right of way and compile appropriate data for compensation, if any.
“Outside Lagos, the pace had at best been slow,” Yin confided in our correspondent. Outside its site office at Ebute Meta Junction, the only other place where a site office has been sited is Papalanto in Ogun State. The entire project is designed to have nine site offices.
“We seem to have no problem between Km 0 – DK 55, (i.e. Ebute Meta to Papalanto) where approvals have been obtained and from DK 55 to DK 133, which is under consideration by the Ogun State government, where we seemed to have the bigger issue is from 133 to 184 where little or nothing seemed to have been done,” Yin said.
While the twin issues of rain and right of way are being sorted, the contractor, however, said the company has been accelerating work on the casting of the concrete track slippers. CCECC, he revealed, will take delivery of 45,000 tons of rail tracks by month end, while actual laying of the tracks would begin by November. He stated that 3,000 tons would be needed for the Lagos-Ibadan lot.
Within the Lagos metropolis, sundry impediments, such as inadequate height of flyover bridges, (which also affects the Ijoko flyover bridge under construction by the Ogun State government), inordinate numbers of road intersections and level crossings, and outright repositioning of several basic infrastructural facilities such as water mains and pipes, electricity and telecommunications ducts and cables, high tension cables, electricity substations, buildings and underground gas pipeline at Apapa, remain major impediments that may choke the deadline.
Delayed answers
Though Amaechi was unable to chair the October meeting, which held last Tuesday, he had, the month before, promised to alert the President to direct the NNPC on the urgent need to relocate the gas pipeline submerged by the lagoon to enable work on the Lagos end go unimpeded.
Other stakeholders, Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states, who had never failed to attend the meeting, also agreed to expeditiously attend to their side of the challenges.
For instance, at Ijoko, the Ogun State governor Sen. Ibikunle Amosun, and Amaechi agreed to permit government engineers work with the contractor to adopt the best design with the least cost to the flyover bridge.
Similar considerations are on the card for the twin Costain bridges linking the mainland to Apapa, which are also to be affected by the design as the standard gauge heads to the ports.
In September, Amaechi said: “We are confident the contractor would be able to deliver because back in their country, which has almost the same climatic condition like ours, they construct 1,500 kilometres of rail tracks yearly.”
He said the government has fully paid N70 billion being its counterpart funding for the project takeoff, while the funds to meet other commitments have also been approved by the National Assembly.
According to him, it is the first time the government would make funds available with a commitment to spend all at achieving the goal for which it was meant.
“While previous government might have taken decades to deliver the Abuja-Kaduna standard gauge, we are determined to achieve this within two years and committed to achieving the Lot III (Ibadan- Kano), in a year because 90 percent of the terrain is in the Sahel region, which records less rain,” he added.
Beyond the government, the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) said it is ready to assist the contractor meet its deadline.
Its Managing Director, Mr Fidet Okhiria said its demolition gang are primed to swing into action to clear the right of way of all impediments that might obstruct the project.
While the CCECC blamed the stakeholders for slow pace, the Corporation equally blamed the contractor for its tardiness.
Aside the skeletal work at Ebute Meta, Yaba and Agege, the other place where the contractor seemed to have worked was Papalanto, where it was constructing a site office for its site workers.
“While we have gone ahead and demolished all illegal structures, within Lagos metropolis up to Ijoko, in Ogun State, the contractor pace within the metropolis has been slow. The result is that these structures are already springing up again in other forms. The contractor should speed up along the corridor, which the corporation had paved to prevent illegal squatters taking over again,” Okhiria said, while fielding questions on the impediments in September.
Similar threats to the project again reared its head at the October meeting, last Tuesday, which the Corporation’s Chairman,Usman Abubakar, an engineer. He presided at the meeting and assured that such threats would be frontally tackled.
Abubakar assured that despite the hindrances created by access and right of way, the project would be delivered in December 2018 as planned.
The board chairman also assured that a consultant is compiling the list of people whose structures would give way for the project.
He said:”This is a routine meeting where we evaluate progress and attend to the challenges on this project, and I must say that from reports from the contractor, things are going fairly okay.”
Vice President Osinbajo at the flag-off of the project had underscored the actualisation of the standard gauge as one of the core pillars of the government.
“The modernisation of railway services is one that is very dear to the President because it was part of his campaign promises,” Prof Osinbajo had said.
Underscoring this endearment, Amaechi also painted the picture that the President may develop a high blood pressure over any impediment that might derail its delivery.
The problem is time. Would the remaining 457 days be enough to achieve a world class track? Would the other stakeholders, especially the state governments join hands with a Federal Government, which seemed committed to deliver a speed rail to the South of Nigeria?
Conclusion
On the face of it, according to Amaechi, Lagos, Ogun and Oyo state governors have no choice as derailing the current pace would ordinarily pitch them against the people. Only time would tell if his assessment is right.
