₦airaland Forum

All this disruption/power outage stuff only happens with GOVERNMENT OWNED business.

Do you see this happen in the western world, with things run by proper businessmen trying to make a profit?

Anyway, trains can run on diesel. This is likely what you'd use, not electricity.

ola olabiy:
What I am saying is Lagos will always have investors who are interested. They know that Lagos is rich enough to meet its obligations.

Osun is crippled - financially! No private sector in Osun. It is non-existent.

Lagos is industrialized, the commercial nerve centre of West Africa.

Lagos has no obligations with the light rail, if I'm not mistaken. They just said, "Hey, build this rail on this route. Each route costs $1 billion. Invest the money, and recoup your profit through fees you charge on users."

So how does the wealthiness of Lagos/Osun come into play here? Lagos State can be very poor. . . but so long as the businessman knows he can get enough traffic and charge a fair price for his service, he'll make his money. The investor/business doesn't have Lagos State/Osun State as its customers. It has people.

All  it cares about is, "can I get enough traffic on this route to make my money?" Everything else is secondary.

ola olabiy:
You are making references to Lagos state. A state that can survive without FG?

What does that have to do with anything? Lagos State wanted to have Good Thing X. They didn't use their own money to get Good Thing X. . . so how much money they have is irrelevant. Since they didn't spend much of their own cash for any of these projects. They instead found investors who wanted to build Good Thing X, make their profit too. That way everyone wins. . . Lagosians get nice infrastructure, and the investor makes profit.

So what does the FG have to do with any of this? Or Lagos State's revenue

All the investor cares about is, "after investing this much money, will I recoup my investment and make profit at the end of the day?" That is all that matters.

Sigh

Who told you that any of those states would be contributing that much money 

Or did Lagos State spend the $1 billion on each of the 7 lightrail routes it setup? Or did it instead find outside investors? Did it even spend $1 billion on the Lekki road? Or Eko Atlantic?

You are too pessimistic. . . unrealistically so. Things are happening in Lagos using entirely private funds. I'd like this to be mostly private funds too. It is a for-profit venture, not a charity.

Anyway, you seem to disagree that it'd be profitable for investors. We'll have to agree to disagree, I guess.

@ola olabiy: Ok, let's do a bit of guesstimation.

Straight line distance from Lagos to Ibadan is 75 miles=120 km (http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance-calculator.htm).

How much does it cost to lay down a mile of track? Here is one source (http://www.railway-technical.com/finance.shtml) that suggests it could be as little as $2 million per kilometer for a 3rd world country like naija. Even multiply this by a factor of 10, say $20 million per kilometer.

So $2.4 billion for a railroad that connects the two largest cities in Yorubaland.

How much traffic will this railroad see per day? Again to guesstimate, I wouldn't be surprised if it were far more than 50,000 people going roundtrip per day. . . so let's round down a bit and say 15 million trips per year. Even if I'm only charging $10 per roundtrip, that is $150 million in gross revenue a year from passenger traffic alone. Not to mention commercial traffic.

I've probably underestimated the daily traffic on this road by 10X. . . 500,000 people daily is probably a much better estimate.

Anyway, these guesstimates would need to be refined a lot more, and have obviously missed a lot of other important factors. But the basic picture of "cash cow" is pretty accurate, in my opinion. Fee free to disagree/point out where my assumptions might be way off, though.

I highly doubt that a well-designed railway from Lagos to Ibadan is inherently noncompetitive with what it must compete against (FG roads, air transport.)

If someone shows me some #s suggesting that it is unlikely to be profitable, then sure, I'll buy that. But right now, from intuition I believe the opposite. I suspect that it'd even be a cash cow.

@ola olabiy: Of course it is not. Am I expecting the 6 SW states to come up with the lion's share of the money to fund this rail themselves? No. They'll contribute land and some token startup cash, but the bulk of the money will be invested by private investors.

ola olabiy:
Ekubear, high-speed trains are still NOT profitable in Britain. After hundreds of years, still being subsidized.

Rail was profitable in the US in the early 1900s. Let us not assume that this will need to be subsided in Nigeria.

ola olabiy:
I don't know how Osun (sorry oo, Stranger) or Ekiti will survive without FG.

This states can't provide ordinary water, I tell ya. The don't have the money.

Yet, you are talking about high-speed trains. In a society where universities are in total blackout, day in day out.

Is Osun Oshogbo going to generate the needed power for us? We mustn't always see things from the viewpoint of an exotic, West-based Nigerian.

Abegi jare.

Are you talking about a situation in which the SW is a new independent nation? Then yes, Osun and Ekiti will suffer a lot. But that isn't the case right now; they'll still get their federal allocations and thus be fine. I don't see the relevance of this.

ola olabiy:
High-speed rail before drinkable water?

Yes! High-speed rail is profitable for everyone involved (foreign investor, states, riders of the rail, the FG, etc), drinkable water may or may not be. In any case, why is it one or the other? The high-speed rail ideally will be funded by profit-seeking investors; it isn't some sort of charity thing.

I'm not asking anyone to lay down tracks connecting Ibadan to Lagos out of the goodness of his heart. I'm asking him to do this so he can make money! Of course, I win too, since the service he provides is cheaper for me than using the road.

There are lots of cheap on-demand book publishing companies available. Lulu.com is one I've heard of before; you can check out others.

Then we should be content with no progress in the next 4 or 400 years, I guess.

I don't understand this pessimistic attitude. At least let us try rather than quitting even before trying

@OAM4J: The hope is that we aren't the ones spending the money doing it. Let the states contribute some land and some small startup cash. But we'd like to source the cash from abroad, if possible. Invite private investors who will then recoup their investment through fees.

@ola olabiy: Why not? I'm starting to think that this would be a pretty solid proposition for investors. Yorubaland (in Nigeria) is roughly the size of New York State. New York State's population is like 20 million, Yorubaland's is probably 40, 50 million or so. We have several pretty big cities.

I'm not proposing rail networks in the middle of nowhere, like the border with Niger Republic. I'm talking about one of the most densely populated places in Africa. If it has to be subsidized by anyone and the people who use it cannot afford to pay fair value for it, then I guess we will have to stick with the currently very poor road network.

Hrm, I've only been on Amtrak (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak) once before in my life.

But maybe this is a good template to follow.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, though.

I see. I don't know much about rail, and didn't know you could use the same track for both purposes. Very interesting.

So how would you guys suggest doing this, if you were in charge of it? I'd assume that you'd want to link Lagos and Ibadan first, since that would probably be one of the more profitable interstate routes. But how would you proceed? What time frame would it take? Which cities would you link?

Katsumoto:
You can't duplicate the road network when you haven't got rail.

You mean that it is a bad idea to do this, I guess.

It makes more sense to go with rail. Rail requires less land than trunk roads and with the state of existing roads, it could be cheaper to lay tracks than to repair the roads.

So are you envisioning
A) better ordinary rail networks for transporting goods
B) and high-speed rail/train from say Ibadan to Lagos to transport people?

That, as an alternative to laying down new interstate roads?

naijababe:
Not sure it will work on any of the above, are all the above under the power of the FG? I recall Tinubu wanted to badly to commence IPP in Lagos with Enron and Obj suffocated it

I'm not sure of the details of the Tinubu situation. But the current power regulation in this country is very messed up. . . current situation is analagous to mandating that rice farmer must sell his rice for less than it costs him to produce. Nobody will farm rice if the are forced to sell at a loss. A bit more complicated than that, but this paints the basic picture.

Basically, the roads in the SW are unacceptable. The FG will not spend the billions of dollars required to make them acceptable.

So your options are either:
1) Get them to hand the roads over to you, and let you start tolling.
2) Build an entirely new toll road yourself.

Like, am I missing anything here? If there are other options, let me know. But if these are the only two options, and option #1 is unavailable, then to me it seems we must find a way to do #2.

I mean, are you guys fine with the following road network connecting the two major cities in the SW:
https://i56.tinypic.com/acq2v9.png

That is just not enough road. We need a lot more.

zstranger:
Thats an interstate road. Who is going to assume primary responsibility?

Set it up as a corporation? Lagos-Ibadan Road Plc, and its major asset being that road? And give shares to the states involved? At least in theory, being interstate shouldn't be a problem, no? Just make it a private corporation but which states owning some portion of it.

Or is this unrealistic?

naijababe:
Was wound down by Yardie government, BG, the company at the helm of the project became frustrated that they are winding down and moving their staff out  

Depressing. Why? Wtf could be the reason? It didn't use any government money. . .

Alright, fine. If the FG doesn't want to relinquish control of the roads, why not build new toll roads? For example, a toll road from Ibadan to Lagos? Land use act allows the state governments to acquire land for this purpose for free, yes?

So at least in theory, we could do a feasibility study and see if it is possible. Thoughts?

Power is a major issue of course. But that is kind of out of our hands, until Goodluck privatizes PHCN and liberalizes the tariff scheme (so that investing in power distribution is profitable.)

At that point, if the Ikeja/Eko/Ibadan/Benin discos are turned over to competent private hands, we'll have enough power.

seanet02:
The state governments won't like taking over the Federal roads except their is a correspondent increase in their allocations, it might just be a drain on them. Collaborating together to build inter state roads will be a better option

What if they take them over but are allowed to charge tolls? If they can do that, I'd love to see it happen. Toll and you can raise money to build roads that look like this:
http://www.treehugger.com/US-highway-80-infrastructure-photo.jpg

BTW, there is already a major port under construction at this Olokola FTZ:
http://www.ondostate.gov.ng/olokola.pdf

So we'll have another port city other than Lagos.

seanet02:
Thinking of the Large Bitumen deposit being in Ondo being explored but the FG is a cog in the wheel of Progress. Needs their approval to do this. The governors should also try and set up a regional marketing board to help the Rejuvenation of cocoa and rubber industry.

You mean crude oil from bitumen? Hehe, I sort of don't want to tap that unless Nigeria scatters. It is very very damaging on the environment. . . you don't want to turn your homeland into a wasteland like the Niger delta.

If naija scatters, then you partner with Canada, Israel, Venezuela, Brazil, countries like that to commercial it.

Katsumoto:
If they have the funds, they can build tracks throughtout the SW. Trains can be used to transport people and products. The foundations for this can laid in the next four years as all governors belong to the same party, so inter-state cooperation should be easier.

They can probably come up with the funds using some sort of private public partnership.

If they wait on the FG, they will wait for ever. Transportation crippled Tinapa

Is there any way to push the FG to privatize the roads in the SW? Or to hand them over to the SW states? At least once it is under our control, we can fix them. . . making them toll roads if necessary to raise money to fix.

I've also wondered a bit about the road networks in the SW. What is the best way to fix them rapidly? Unfortunately, the more important roads are owned by the FG. . . this is a major stumbling block.

@naijababe: So like 50+ hectare farms? Or how big are you saying? And how did Akintola mess this up?

Anyway, you are right. We need some sort of farm loans so that even small farmers can get access to tractors, fertilizers, improved high-yield seeds, pesticides, etc.

I'm not sure of the exact structure needed to supply these things to farmers, but without them they'll find it difficult to be competitive against the rest of the world.

I agree, import bans are not needed if we can make our farmers competitive and productive.

Those pictures are beautiful.

Agric is sort of a difficult puzzle. You want to

A) encourage large modern efficient farms; this is the new direction the world has been moving to for a long time now.
B) but you also need to raise the productivity of your typical small-holder farmer

(A) is very sexy and probably easier to attract funding for. But although (B) is more difficult, it is probably just as important for raising standards of living and increasing food production.

ok, let us just not celebrate for too long. too much work to be done over the next four years to relax and not hold leaders accountable. Celebrate for a bit, but then it comes time to map out a plan for the future.

unfortunate

^-- Hehe. OK. I guess in a week or so, we'll revisit this thread.

hmm

Alright, good that the PDP has been kicked out of all of the SW.

Now, what is the plan? What are the biggest things on the todo list for Oyo, Ogun, and each of the other SW states?

Also, what tasks should the region tackle collectively?

SW folk are welcome to post here and discuss what they want their state and region to look like in four years time.