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By Emmanuel Ogala
June 19, 2011 03:19PM

In the early hours of June 28 in Shanghai China, while Nigeria will still be sleeping, a Chinese high speed train will take off with passengers to Beijing, bringing the country's longest high speed railway service into commercial use.

The Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway is a 1,318 kilometres network that connects two major economic zones in the People's Republic of China. It is the world's longest high-speed line ever constructed in a single phase.

Construction on the rail line began on April 18, 2008, two-and-a-half years after Nigeria's transport ministry signed an $8.3 billion contract with the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) to reconstruct the 1,315 kilometre Lagos - Kano railway under the watch of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo.

A ceremony to mark the completion of track laying for the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway was held on November 15, 2010. It took the Chinese exactly two years and eight months to complete theirs. Nigeria's network is three kilometres shorter than the Chinese. It is also a relatively unsophisticated system, meant to carry basic speed locomotive trains. But it is far from finished, five years after the contract was signed.

The Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway project cost the country about $32 billion. It has 24 stations, 22 tunnels and 244 bridges - including the 164-km long Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge which is the longest bridge in the world.

Designers of China's high-speed railway network say the trains will run at a speed of 350 km/h, with a maximum speed of up to 380 km/h which would cut the train travel time between Beijing and Shanghai from 10 hours to 4.8 hours.

"Its technology is advanced, its quality reliable and safety guaranteed," China's deputy rail minister, Hu Yadong, told reporters on Monday in Beijing. "The technical reliability of the line, as measured by international criteria, is world class!"

Comparatively, this network is a thousand times more sophisticated than the Lagos-Kano railway. But even though Nigeria's project is handled - now in part - by the Chinese, it will hardly be completed soon.

History of failed efforts

The history of failed attempts to reconstruct Nigeria's obsolete railway dates back to the Shehu Shagari government of 1979-1983. Other regimes, including those headed by Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha invited Indians, Romanians and the Chinese to handle the project.

But they all failed serially. The nation lost money and nobody was held responsible.

On 9 December 1995, the Abacha-led government signed a $528 million contract with CCECC to rehabilitate Nigeria's entire 3,500km rail network, supply 620 locomotives and rolling stocks and provide technical training for Nigeria Rail Corporation (NRC) staff. It was a four-year project, but it failed in the second year.

Transport ministry officials blamed the Chinese company for the supplying sub-standard locomotives. But the Chinese said most of the sub-contractors, who are local firms, failed to supply the products after they had been mobilised.

In 2006, after receiving a $2.5bn loan - expected to be used on Nigeria's railway project - from the Chinese government, Mr Obasanjo called back CCECCC and awarded them an $8.3 billion five year contract to reconstruct the Lagos-Kano railway.

The project was supposed to be the first phase of a 20-year railway modernisation programme of the federal government.

"The contract provided for an advance payment of $1.1356 billion from the federal government of Nigeria, but so far we have been paid only 250 million dollars in March 2007," CCECC Vice-President Chen Xiaoxing said in a statement in June 2008.

Mr Xiaoxing was reacting to a Punch Newspaper publication which accused the firm and the government of inflating the contract by $5.8 billion.

The rehabilitation contract was cancelled in November 2008. Diezani Alison-Maduekwe, who was heading the Transport ministry at the time, argued that the railway modernization programme faced "constitutional limitations" with regards to funding the project with money from the excess crude.

Tanimu Yakubu, the Chief Economic Adviser to the late president Umaru Musa Yar'Adua also said in a Business Roundtable in Abuja in 2008 that the award of the contract was flawed and failed to meet his boss' Rule of Law principles.

"For an administration that prides itself in the rule of law, I don't see how illegality will be strictly adhered to in the name of continuity," Mr Tanimu said.

The $8.2 billion contract was dumped and the Chinese parted with about $1.6 billion.

In June 2008, before the comments by late Yar'Adua's aides, Robert Ejenavi, former Auditor-General of the Federation had told a Senate Committee on Transport public hearing that the nation spent over $826.6 million without results on railway contracts between 1999 and 2007.

In November 2009, the Yar'Adua government split the Lagos-Kano railway rehabilitation project and awarded the 488km Lagos-Jebba rail track to CCECC for $81.3 million.

The following month, the longer 827 km Jebba-Kano end of the railway was awarded to Costain West Africa at the same cost. In the same swoop, a $180 million contract for the manufacture of 25 locomotives was awarded to General Electric. GE has delivered the locomotives, but there is no track to run them on.

In the heat of 2011 presidential campaigns, President Goodluck Jonathan, on Saturday 12 March 2011 rode on one of the locomotives from Lagos-Abeokuta (98 km line) to attend a rally of the Peoples Democratic Party in the Ogun state capital.

Before he boarded, he admitted he was "highly honoured and pleased to commission the newly acquired locomotive engines".

Yusuf Suleiman, the then transport minister also told journalists that the Lagos-Jebba axis, handled by CCECC, was fully rehabilitated and set for a test run.

Eleven days later, the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) management set out on its first test run in an eight-coach train, packed with journalists, and headed from Lagos to Ilorin. After seven hours of a noisy and bumpy ride, the test run was aborted in Ibadan. The train travelled 109 km.

The test run trip was abandoned because the driver got a radio message advising them to stop at Ibadan because engineers discovered some parts of the rail tracks were still faulty, David Ndanusa, NRC's Assistant Director, Public Relations, who was also on the trip told reporters.

"What is left to be worked on are just the rail tracks," Timothy Oluwole, the train driver confirmed. "The engine is new; it was brought in from Brazil. Every other thing is perfect, but the trip was slow because we wanted to be careful with the tracks."

No Firm Decision

Successive Nigerian governments have struggled to put the country at a spot where every other developing country - including itself - was at 1950; despite committing huge sums of money that could have constructed new high speed rail, if prudently used. However, each time, the government spends even more to rehabilitate an old railway system.

In China, the 364 km Jiaoji High Speed Rail was built with $1.7 billion, at $4.6 million per kilometre. Meanwhile, when Mr Obasanjo was signing the Lagos-Kano rehabilitation contract in 2006, it was negotiated at $3.06 million per kilometre; 64% of what it cost the Chinese to build their cheapest high speed rail.

The success of the Chinese railway system highlights another difference between the two countries: Nigerian governments' indulgence and high tolerance for corruption.

During the course of the Beijing -Shanghai High-Speed Railway project, in February this year, Liu Zhijun, then Chinese railways minister was dismissed after an investigation into serious violations following a major corruption scandal that raised concerns of costs and safety.

In Nigeria, the senate committee on transportation submitted a report in 2009 indicting some Nigerians but the Sixth senate shunned the report.

The report, which probed government's spending on land transport between 1999 and 2007, chiefly indicted Tony Anenih, a former works minister, for misappropriating funds meant for different land transportation projects. Mr Anenih is a member of the ruling PDP Board of Trustees.

The report also shows that Nigeria's public transportation sector is one huge stretch of fraud involving multiple contract cases and the connivance between contractors and government officials.

The reports recommended that Tony Anenih, Adeseye Ogunlewe, Obafemi Anibaba, and Cornelius Adebayo who headed the transport ministry within that period, their deputy ministers and permanent secretaries be prosecuted.

The report also indicted Diezani Allison-Madueke, for paying more than $8 million into the private account of a company called Digital Toll Gates Limited against the written advice of the Due Process Office. The report now lies in the archive of the senate, notwithstanding the cost of the investigations.

"The Nigerian government should realise that every day that passes without a firm decision taken on this modernisation project will only aggravate the cost in the final analysis," Mr Xiaoxing said in his 2008 statement. His words are still apt.

David Ndakotsu, the spokesman of the NRC, said the Lagos-Jebba rail line handled by CCECC is 90% complete while the Jebba-Kano end is almost 80 percent finished.

"Lagos-Kano transit will likely resume in September," he said.

He also argued that the corporation is fixing the locomotive system rather than build a new High Speed rail because of the electricity energy requirement of speed rails. He added that the highest speed a train can run on the rails after rehabilitation would be between 60 to 62km per hour.

End of Article

Well, even though we were 419 'ed, people, as always, chose to rejoice https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-629743.0.html

This is the narrow gauge tracks that they can't even get right? Have they even started upgrading the tracks to dual gauge? By 2012 Lagos will be running train services on standard gauge tracks. When that happens it will truly show how useless and pointless the Federal Government really is.

I thought during the campaign we were told that the rails were funtional. was it a campaign gimmick?

Big gimmick

Same old shít