As the battle for 2023 Presidential seat intensifies, former governor of Rivers State and Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, has kept mum over his interest. He told the ABUJA BUREAU CHIEF, BRIDGET CHIEDU ONOCHIE, while his teammates who jointly worked to bring President Muhammadu Buhari to power are jostling, he remains satisfied as the Minister for Transport. He also gave insight into the kind of leader he would want to succeed Buhari as well as the efforts of the government towards connecting Nigerian communities by rail transportation.

• ‘Connecting Communities By Rail Is Great Impetus For Economic Growth’

The Federal Government has restated its commitment to infrastructure development, a major aspect of that being railway. However, Nigerians keep expressing concerns over lack of connectivity in some railways. For instance, trains to Delta State take off from Itakpe, Lokoja, Kogi State. People expected it to take off from Abuja?
I am from Port Harcourt. I should even be angry with you for complaining because we don’t have any. Itakpe-Delta is 80 per cent of the deal, remaining 20 per cent. What of those that do not have at all?

Even the Abuja inter-city rail connection, which was commissioned before the last election, is yet to begin full operation…. What is the issue?
You people should pity the government. The process of acquiring rolling stock is not easy. Also, There is also a difference between the Federal Ministry of Transport and Federal Capital Territory Administration. That project was not Federal Ministry of Transport’s project.

…But it is an integrated system
The issue here is that the FCT government prefers to complete and commission its rail projects. Let me give you an example; we have started the process of purchasing the rolling stocks for the ones we are constructing now. But what the FCT does is to complete the project before they start looking for money to buy rolling stock. The problem is that they don’t have the money to buy rolling stock.

They don’t have the coaches, the locomotives to start running. So, they have to buy, and I heard it has arrived. The coaches would soon start functioning.

In our own case, we are envisaging that in two years, we should be able to finish Kaduna-Kano and Port Harcourt-Maiduguri railways. We are looking for loan. Once we get it, we will place order for locomotives. If you observe, when we commissioned Kaduna-Kano railway, it took us some weeks before we started running because we were waiting for the rolling stocks. Now, we have learnt our lessons. Before we commissioned Lagos-Ibadan, the rolling stocks were on ground. That is what they did not do. We have also started the process of purchasing rolling stocks for Port-Harcourt-Maiduguri, Lagos-Calabar, Kano-Maradi and Kano-Kaduna railways. By the time we are commissioning, we have specific rolling stocks that will run. So, as soon as we commission, we put commercial activities on the track.

To address the breaks in rail routes that you pointed out, the contract has been awarded for the Abuja-Itakpe railway for a long time. It should have been completed by now, but the Chinese contractor thought he was playing on our intelligence. He did not come for a contract. He said “Give me Public/Private Partnership (PPP.) We will bring the money, the company will borrow the money even though it is federal government guaranteed and I will give you back-to-back, the bank guarantee to protect the federal government guarantee. Then, we will run the company and pay back within 40 years. That way, your guarantee is protected.” We said: “Okay. Go and bring the back-to-back guarantee from your bank.” Till today, he has not been able to do it.

So, I am asking the meeting to get the federal government to cancel his PPP agreement, not contract. What he did was that he wanted to get the contract from behind without competition through PPP. So, where is the PPP? Now, he said, “No PPP, make it an LPC contract.” But LPC contract is different from procurement. PPP arrangement is not a contract because you are putting your money as investment. There is no where in the world that they have done PPP in railway, but this Chinese came and said he can do PPP. Maybe he thought that we would ask him to take sovereign guarantee without asking for a bank guarantee from him. What is killing him is that we asked for the bank guarantee. If we didn’t ask for it, he would have used our sovereign guarantee to get loan. So, we are saying that he cannot proceed until he gives us the bank guarantee, and for three, four years, he has not been able to produce it.

he mean the opposite,dont bother urselves

I doubt Amechi said all this

walemoney007:
I doubt Amechi said all this

No he didn't say the above headline

It is opolor eye urchins that are hell bent on targeting his character forgetting their oga have said worse calling buhari work "unseen"

Amaechi is an ingrate after they turban you yesterday in daura you still have the guts to muck our president that Nigeria economy did not crash

Amechi, I like you but sychopancy get limit naah.

aguiyi2:
Amechi, I like you but sychopancy get limit naah.

Atleast him sycophancy is paying him instead of receiving dustbin treatment

So Buhari prevented the crashed economy from crashing

kettykin:
So Buhari prevented the crashed economy from crashing