President Muhammadu Buhari will perform the groundbreaking ceremony for the commencement of rehabilitation work on the Eastern rail corridor on Tuesday, March 9, 2021.
The Minister of Transportation, Mr Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, disclosed this during an inspection tour of the Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge rail project recently.
The Eastern corridor, which is a narrow-gauge rail track as opposed to the standard gauge on the South West to North West stretches from Port Harcourt through the South East, Middle Belt, North East and terminates in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.
The minister further disclosed that the president had also approved the redirecting of the Eastern line to two new spurs: Abakaliki in Ebonyi State and Awka in Anambra State, adding that the federal government was still negotiating loans for the Lagos to Calabar double gauge rail project.
On the take-off of the Ibadan-Kano rail project, Amaechi said the government was still seeking approval for a loan to enable it to take off.
On the Lagos-Ibadan rail project, Amaechi said he had challenged Messrs China Civil Engineering and Construction Company (CCECC) to deploy global acceptable safety and security standards for the project and that a central cooling system be installed in all the major train stations along the route.
Meanwhile, Engineer Fidet Okhiria, the Managing Director of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), said the Port Harcourt to Maiduguri reconstruction project was awarded earlier.
Engr Okhiria said, “What we want to do now is to reconstruct Port Harcourt to Maiduguri, a contract of N3.2bn has already been signed and work will commence soon.”
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