Mixed Metaphors: Buhari’s Niger Rail, Obaseki’s Time

I congratulate President Muhammadu Buhari for swiftly congratulating Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki following last week’s election.

It was a decisive victory for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate and incumbent, and it was good to see Buhari acknowledge that. I will talk about Edo State in a moment.

Sadly, Buhari’s government then immediately announced a massive contract of nearly $2bn to build a rail line from Kano to Maradi in Niger Republic.

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You heard that right: almost $2bn for a rail line that is of little economic benefit for Nigeria, although that is not how the Buhari government presents it.

In February 2018, Transportation Minister Rotimi Amaechi claimed that the project was vital because “Niger Republic, Chad and others” had abandoned Nigerian seaports.

“They go to countries like Benin Republic and they are growing the economy of those people and we do not have deep seaports in Nigeria.”

Benin Republic, Amaechi explained, was the first to build a deep seaport in Nigeria. Nobody knew what language he was speaking.

And now, with the Kano-Maradi rail project formally in play, nobody knows what economic sense it makes. Remember, in July 2016, Amaechi announced the signing of the MOU for the Lagos-Calabar rail, which President Goodluck had Jonathan originally signed with China in November 2014 for $11.9bn.

“..We were able to save 800 million dollars from the initial sum of the project which will be delivered in the next two years,” he said.

Two? Four years later, there is no Lagos-Calabar rail.

Remember also that in March 2017, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo launched the Lagos-Ibadan rail, to be completed by the end of 2018. It is almost the end of 2020, and despite near-montly promises by Amaechi, it has not been delivered.

Some progress has certainly been made on some of the other projects, but that does not explain the overall policy chaos in the sector. You smelled the stench in October 2017, just days after Amaechi’s Transportation Ministry unveiled its new Rail Development Plan which included 10 new rail lines, when Amaechi declared that nothing might be built after all.

“The money is not just there,” he said of the budgetary requirements. “It is a total of about $16 billion and you don’t just pluck $16 billion from the sky.”

Amaechi then looked to the United States, and in May 2018, signed up with an international consortium led by General Electric, to rehabilitate Nigeria’s rail system.

Later that month in Abuja, Pennsylvania-based US company Ameri Metro, which invests in high-speed rail, offered to Nigeria’s Ministry of Transportation $10bn investment in the Lagos-Calabar rail. It is unclear why Amaechi was uninterested.

But in June 2019, Buhari approved Amaechi’s request of a $2.3bn loan, allegedly for the project, with Amaechi explaining that $1.8bn would be loaned from China, while Nigeria would provide $500m in counterpart funding.

That was just four months before Buhari’s state visit to Russia in October, where Amaechi pivoted into a startling MoU with a company for something described as the “modernisation, infrastructure development and rehabilitation” of Nigeria’s rail projects.

Happy with himself but without explaining what had happened to the Chinese or to the Americans, Amaechi sat smugly in Abuja for about four months waiting for a plane-load of Russians. Surprised that none appeared to be coming, in February this year he began to blame them, swearing that President Vladimir Putin had “directed” a Russian firm to partner with Nigeria on the Lagos-Calabar line.

In other words, the Buhari government has confusion in its head and a mess on its hands. Given its lack of competence, focus or national pride, I predict that it will require another 5-10 years, which it cannot beg or borrow, to build the project.

Meanwhile, they will commence the $1.9bn saber-rattling to make Nigeriens, not Nigerians, happy with the Kano-Maradi line.

But Buhari and Amaechi will not build it, either. And if they did, it will be left at the mercy of assorted marauders, herdsmen, kidnappers and robbers that currently threaten the Abuja-Kaduna rail.

The irony is that there are hundreds of thousands of Nigerians displaced by Boko Haram into Niger that Buhari does not care about. In January 2016, the United Nations reported that about 100,000 such people who had fled into Niger in previous weeks desperately needed assistance.

On March 30, 2017, the New York Times reported there were over 130,000 people such Nigerians amassed in Niger’s Diffa region, along National Route and in May. It was not a real camp, and they lacked even water. Two months later, Medicins San Frontieres reported that number as having doubled to about 240,000. No concern was shown by the Buhari government.

And now we are building a rail line to make Niger happy. Contrary to ancient wisdom, it is the lion which now woos the mouse.

Somewhere, the mouse is laughing. And the Chinese. And the Americans. And the Russians.

And we wonder why everyone is ignoring us, and why we are the poverty capital of the world. Thank God that, as he often reminds Nigerians, Amaechi does not like money.

Let us turn to Obaseki, whose lease of Government House has just been renewed by the people. He should enjoy the euphoria of having finally buried the political ghosts of Adams Oshiomhole and of Bola Tinubu.

Hopefully, Obaseki finds a moment of humility to understand what he has just demonstrated. No, not that Oshiomhole is weak, arrogant, and conquerable. That Oshiomhole is. But he, Obaseki, now has to conquer the most important: himself.

What Obaseki demonstrated the most is bigger than Edo State: it is that in real terms, APC and PDP are one and the same. There is no difference in philosophy. They are both corrupt, lying underachievers, but the stars aligned to enable Obaseki emerge from the rubble.

It is an opportunity granted to few men, because Obaseki now has it in his hands to commence the rebuilding of the fortunes of Nigeria by deploying his chance into building a massively successful state which nurtures talent and merit, not nepotism, indolence and corruption.

Let Obaseki headhunt the best talents from anywhere in the state and the world. Le him publicly define the mission, as well as his mode of monitoring and measurement. Edo will become a destination, not just a dream, and its triumph will become the challenge for every other government in Nigeria, including the federal.

But if Obaseki misses his cue, or transits into the shameless new replacement godfather, within four years he will be at the receiving end of the regrets and curses of Time, and the Edo people.

He can be the screaming lesson to the nation that the electorate clearly does not care which political party or church you belong to, only of what you are made.

Metaphorically-speaking, Governor, return to Afuze. Show the people, by the state’s measuring rod, which is Samuel Ogbemudia, that they may have voted for you by voting against a vile predecessor, but that picked a deliverer.

Foreigners ask me what Obaseki means. I tell them it means the Oba is bigger than the market.

Governor, you may introduce yourself.

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