₦airaland Forum

Greattha:
They most likely didn't do feasibility studies. Definetly No SWOT analysis.

They usually embark on inefficient projects that they can use as front to loot.

It was probably an avenue for more looting hence it has served its purpose.

Upon opening in 2018, only the section between Abuja Metro Station and the Airport was operational, with an intermediate station at Idu. The remaining nine stations were originally scheduled to begin operations in 2020.

The rolling stock used for this line initially consisted of only three diesel rail coaches. A further three were scheduled to be delivered in mid-2020.[7]

From the opening, the rail line operated on a significantly reduced timetable in comparison to other worldwide light rail systems; with three daily departures from Idu to Abuja Metro Station, with two running the full length to the airport, on weekdays only.[8] The delivery of further rolling stock was anticipated to provide services every thirty minutes.

Jeezuzpick:
Who takes train to Abuja airport?

Why leave my house and take an Über to the train station, then take a train to the airport when I can take the Über straight to the airport?

Why will I arrive from Lagos or overseas and start boarding train to a station, only to start looking for another vehicle to take me to my destination, when I can take a car straight there?

These people in government don't know how to source for data to use in developing infrastructure.

To please the people, first find out what the people want.

LOVEALAIGBO:
Most enlightening post of the thread!

They see other countries major cities airports being served by rail, and they rush to replicate such in Nigeria without thinking! The entire transportation system in these countries are highly efficient, clean, comfortable, can connect you to other rail stations all over the city and country and are integrated with other forms of transportation like buses, trams, taxis, ferries and even other airports!

Why get off a plane only to enter train that will dump you one or two stops in the middle of the city or far away from your final destination!?

Nigeria’s Train to Nowhere Shows How Not to Build Public Transit
A light rail system in the capital shut down after less than two years in service.

By William Clowes
29 August 2023 at 05:01 BST


In July 2018, Muhammadu Buhari, the president of Nigeria at the time, boarded a gleaming new train linking the capital city, Abuja, with its airport. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Buhari hailed the system as “evidence that we are a government that delivers on its promises.”

Five years on, that promise looks empty. Train cars are locked away at a depot. Cavernous stations fully equipped with escalators, ticket offices, cameras and scanners stand empty, overseen by bored security guards. The faux leather couches in the VIP area are covered in bird and bat droppings. “It’s an abandoned project,” says Rowland Ataguba, an adviser to the government on rail strategy. “Quite clearly there was no plan on how to run the operations before they built it.”

The $823 million Abuja Light Rail—the first of its kind in West Africa—was closed in March 2020, ostensibly to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Since then, it’s remained shuttered, and there’s been scant progress toward a resumption of service on the 27-kilometer (17-mile) line. Meanwhile, Nigeria is spending $50 million a year paying down the project’s $500 million in loans from the Export-Import Bank of China. “The current situation is a mystery for the next minister to unravel,” says Nasir El-Rufai, who as minister in charge of the capital area signed the contract to build the railway 16 years ago. What do you expect from EL-Rufai ?

The idea was to reduce congestion, helping the city avoid the polluted, traffic-clogged fate of the country’s commercial hub, Lagos—the capital until Abuja, a city newly carved out of the savannah in central Nigeria, opened for business in 1991. From the time planning started in the 1970s, Abuja was always meant to have urban rail, but it wasn’t until 2007 that China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. won the contract for the first leg, and it took another half-decade for the government to secure sufficient funding.

“The line basically avoided where people are, where people live, where people go”

The line was intended to be the first of a half dozen in a 290-kilometer network that would connect the city to the satellite towns where many workers live. Instead, it’s become a lesson in how not to create a mass transit system, says Mohamed Lawal Shaibu of Envicons Teams Ltd., an urban planning consultant in Abuja. The problem, Shaibu says, is that the train serves areas with little demand. “It has been very terribly executed,” he says. “The line basically avoided where people are, where people live, where people go.”

At one end lies the airport, a place where most people who can afford to fly typically arrive by car. At the other end is an isolated area of the so-called Central Business District, where the road in front of the station is more often filled with herders driving cattle to grazing land than anyone headed to or from work. Out back is scrubland where people fleeing violence in the north of the country have built shacks. An additional 18 kilometers of track was built toward the suburbs but never saw any service.

The first section was conceived about two decades ago as an airport link to bolster the capital’s bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games. But after Abuja lost out to Glasgow, local officials stuck with the plan rather than adapting it to create a system that might better serve residents, according to Tonami Playman, an independent researcher who studies African public transport. “Politicians just want something to ribbon-cut and don’t care what kind of utility the infrastructure will provide,” he says.

During the 20 months the line was open, a maximum of four trains a day made the 40-minute trip between the city and the airport in each direction, making just one stop in between while breezing through five other stations. The system failed because it was “neither a high occupancy nor a high frequency service,” according to a report prepared for Japan’s development agency in 2019, which estimated daily ridership at fewer than 1,000 passengers, compared with a forecast of 34,000.

Mohammed Bello, the minister who ran the capital area under Buhari, said in October that he was working “toward the imminent resumption of operations.” That didn’t happen. Bello left his post in May when Buhari retired, and the newly elected president, Bola Tinubu, waited until Aug. 16 to name a successor. Neither Tinubu’s office nor the capital administration replied to questions about the railway.

The new minister in charge of the capital region, Nyesom Wike, on Aug. 23 toured the line and vowed that trains would be back on track within eight months. And the city has signed a $6.6 million deal with the Chinese construction company to complete repairs. The project’s defenders say once the system starts running at full throttle—whenever that might be—it will boost development along the route, and starting with a line through more densely populated areas would have been more expensive.

The main reason for the ongoing closure is damage suffered during the shutdown, according to the state-owned company appointed to run the system in May. A project manager involved in the railway says thieves have stolen crucial equipment such as communications cables, copper wiring and signaling gear, and repairing or replacing that will take at least six months once work begins.

The plan is to integrate the train with a revamped public bus service that will ferry passengers from stations to their final destinations. Until then, though, the 3.8 million residents of the fast-growing city, and millions more who live nearby, are left with few options beyond the thousands of rickety shared taxis and minibuses that ply the streets and highways.

Nigeria is notorious for grand infrastructure projects that are ill-conceived, never completed or quickly abandoned. The Ajaokuta steel mill, for instance, has swallowed $7 billion since the 1970s without ever producing a sheet, rod or coil. The government has committed billions of dollars to restoring four oil refineries that have barely produced any fuel in more than a decade. And just a couple of miles from the train’s city terminus, the 170-meter-tall Millennium Tower—intended to be a cultural complex topped with a revolving restaurant—remains unfinished 17 years after construction began.

Any significant further investment in the rail project in the near term, either providing the needed subsidies for the existing line or constructing the next one, remains unlikely. Nigeria’s government spent almost all its revenue last year on debt service, and going back to Chinese lenders is getting increasingly difficult, as the government and banks there become less generous in the face of growing domestic challenges. Six years ago the Abuja administration awarded China Civil Engineering a $1.5 billion deal to build the second phase of the train system, intended to serve busier areas, but adequate funding has yet to be lined up, leaving the project in deep freeze. “Signing a contract is one thing,” says Najeeb Abdussalam, head of the city’s public transit agency. “Raising the money is another.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-08-29/nigeria-s-failed-train-shows-how-not-to-build-public-transit?utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&cmpid

Lovelyn451:
When a northerner is in power

Hollyharjii:
One thing is to build while another thing, which is paramount is the maintenance...

jaytimeo:
They want to control us we are the Guinea pig for the digital ID aka central bank cbdc , they will tell you how to spend your money ,your money would expire after a certain period if you don’t use it ,if you criticize the government they can block your account easily , we are getting there to the Orwellian state,are we a sovereign country?why would world bank need our identities? the worst part of it is they are not saying if the funding is a loan we are doomed everything is in codes their experiment would start in Nigeria we are finished .

Bichi was born on 23rd February 1956 in Hagagawa Qtrs of Bichi Local Government, Kano State.[1] Bichi attended Kano State College of Advanced Studies (1975–1977) and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (1977–1980), where he graduated with a degree in political science.[2] He attended strategic training at the National Defence College, Abuja where he obtained a certificate with an authorization to use the title, Fellow War College (FWC)

crossfm:
Hehehe.

Nigeria is a funny country. When you think you have seen it all, they will surprise you.

With the economic situation of this country, government is still arranging marriage for people.

A man who can't sponsor his wedding,how is he going to take good care of his family.

Rostikol:
This is the main difference between Nigeria and some of these African countries like Niger and co.

Nigeria has the capacity to leverage these resources IN-HOUSE.

Process them and build anything we want.

I'm very glad Nigerian and African leaders have said that this LITHIUM of a thing will not be like previous raw materials that were just shipped out raw for a pittance.

That era is gone and gone for good.

The other day, Ugandan President Museveni said that some European investors had visited him in his office, and said they wanted to mine Ugandan lithium.

He asked them why.

They said because they wanted to use it to build nuclear power plants, to increase their power generation.

He asked them if they'd ever seen the Access to Electricity statistics for Uganda, vis-a-vis their country.

They said no.

He said ok, that they should go and read it, and get back to him, so that they could discuss how they could partner to use the lithium to increase power generation in UGANDA FIRST, before he can allow them to buy any extra they have left.

He said they left and never returned.

These people?

If you don't use your sense with them, they will finish you.

Loveabove:
I need your say on this please

AllenSpencer:
Their own people failed them!

Too much lies by our foreign brothers has led many astray! Few always say the truth.

But at some point, when you tell them the truth, they will think you don’t wish them well!


Many have sold a good life in Nigeria to buy depression and frustration.

Angelfrost:
Dem just dey toss accusations left, right and center at this man...


Just wait till you hear that the man secretly helped fund the Juntas in those African nations.

Asgard73:
They Yoruba people that has hailed elrufia and his son .. for the past eight years .. will soon be here to abuse and curse his generations for going against their almighty druggie.. then drag him like fool online and tag him Igbo and ipob..
.. that if their moral reach..
Because I’ve notice they hardly insult north anytime they go against Niger war..

But will turn it to ipob and Igbo grin

In Nigeria you will see and witness cowards first hand

Jogs1900:
Guy, wetin Yoruba do you? must you mention Yoruba in all your posts? Thread softly.

Chigozie321:
Subsidy is a criminal enterprise. What government should prioritize is giving support to owners of modular refineries.

More licenses should be given to them and the government should give them tax rebates.

Peledonomy:
Is it that his face has never been seen B4?
This government suppose free the man joor. Why is buhari not being dragged in this mud too?

I dedicate soldier come soldier go by Simi and falz to all those that have left government position. Great jam!

Odewaleadesoye:
The former Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II, has said Nigerians take too much rubbish from politicians, encouraging the masses not to be intimidated by political leaders.

According to Sanusi, if the politicians are not held to account, coming generations might have no country to call theirs.

Sanusi, a former Central Bank of Nigseria, CBN, governor, said that most Nigerians did not go into politics, does not make them inferior, adding that Nigerians are too afraid in their comfort zones.

Speaking in a video that has gone viral, the technocrat said:


VANGUARD

Racoon:
https://www.channelstv.com/2023/08/15/tinubu-govt-inherited-terrible-economic-situation-says-oshiomhole/

The senator representing the Edo North Senatorial District, Adams Oshiomhole, says the government of President Bola Tinubu inherited a terrible economic situation.

Oshiomhole stated this on Tuesday during an interview session with journalists shortly after meeting with the Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, behind closed doors at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

According to the former National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), some of the decisions taken by the current administration are the first step towards revamping the economy.

He added that President Tinubu and his deputy had shown courage and determination to stop the corruption of the subsidy regime and in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), while appealing to Nigerians to be patient.

nlfpmod:
https://twitter.com/UtomiPat/status/1689908883974692864?t=TNqvJAyusWwtENgGSnjq9g&s=08[/quote]Get well soon

ivolt:
Coward brainless thugs in uniform.
Kill him and throw the country into civil war.

festacman:
Gen Abacha had the seasoned Anthony Ani as Minister of Finance and still fleeced Nigeria. Look, appointing a seasoned economist as figure head Prime Minister doesn't stop Junta from looting. The appointment is PR. Nobody argues with a man holding an AK47.

Soldiers are not trained to govern any country. It is an aberration. Coup plotters don't come with any roadmap to develop the country. Things are done according to whims and caprices of the junta leader. They are accountable to nobody. Besides, coup plotting is a high risk venture and looting the country is usually the dividend.

Soldiers are trained to kill enemies of the country. They give orders and orders are obeyed strictly in line with some rigid hierarchical structure.

WhisperedNoise:
I'm not trying to criticize unnecessarily but Baba Bulaba doesn't have concrete plans for Nigeria's economy. He's more interested in rewarding people who rigged him into power than he is in moving the economy forward. It's quite sad, really.

We don't have any working refinery.
There is no cushion for effect of subsidy removal.
No increase in minimum wage.
Nothing was done to help the masses, yet some people are still hailing Tinubu for acting wrongly. Tinubu claims he has saved 1tr within one month. Oya, let him inject the money into the economy, but no. Audio 1tr savings. Very sad.

Without question, Tinubu's few days in office are proving to he more difficult than Buhari's 8 years.

It is not well.

Sighs.

Executing 14.4 GW of fossil power generation based on combined cycle configuration on a fast-track basis over two phases: phase 1 for up to 4.4 GW in an open cycle configuration by the end of 2016; and phase 2 for up to 14.4 GW in a combined cycle configuration in 2018.
https://www.siemens-energy.com/mea/en/company/megaprojects/egypt-megaproject.html

christejames:
Buhari a misfit of a leader took a heterogeneous nation like Nigeria for granted...

How commercially viable would a railway from Kano to Niger be compared to Port Harcourt to Maiduguri, or even Lagos through Onitsha to Calabar as proposed?


Unfortunately, we fell from the estranged union with Buhari and INEC foisted a deadwood leader on Nigerians . What an unfortunate cry for good leaders in Nigeria...


Buhari and those associated with him will not end well!

Botragelad:
Blimey, mate, it seems you don't know what it means to control a country. Let me give you a vocabulary breakdown of what I mean by that statement. To control a country means to have the power and authority to make decisions and enforce laws that affect the people and the resources of that country. It also means to have the ability to influence or shape the political, social, economic, and cultural aspects of that country. It does not mean to simply own a lot of land, hold positions, business or whatever you call it.

You are speaking from an economic/business perspective, but that is only one dimension of control. Just because white South Africans own the majority of lands, businesses, and wealth in South Africa does not mean they are in control of South Africa as a whole. They are only about 7.6% of the population, while the black Africans are about 80.2%_up. The government is run by the African National Congress (ANC), which is the ruling party in the national legislature and in eight of the nine provinces. The ANC has been in power since 1994, when apartheid ended and democracy began. The president of South Africa is Cyril Ramaphosa, who is a black man and a former anti-apartheid activist.

So you see, owning a lot of stuff does not mean controlling a country. It means benefiting from a history of injustice and privilege. It also means facing a lot of challenges. The white South Africans are not the enemy, but they are not the boss either. They are part of a diverse and complex society that is still trying to heal from its past and build its future.

SeeThisLoser:
Some people are shameless. Imagine supporting a criminal to be president of your country because of tribe and religion.

successmatters:
Soon.

The soon we heard about Ajaokuta steel factory has reached 45 years.