₦airaland Forum

Katsumoto: True

Opportunities exist for improving technology, marketing/sales, HR, education, etc which can transform millions of lives but the biggest obstacle to Agriculture and its value chain remains LOGISTICS i.e transportation & power. It is impossible to move away from good road and air transport systems and stable electricity. If you can't store, process, and transport your products, then you might as well be throwing your money away literally.

Pukkah: The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released the poverty incidence figures for 2010 and forecast for 2011 for Nigeria. The figures suggest that the incidence of poverty in Nigeria worsened between 2004 and 2010.

The report indicates that the number of Nigerians living below poverty line rose from 68.7m to 112.5m (63.7% rise in poverty incidence) during the period while the population rose from 139.2m to 158.6m (13.9% rise in population) over the same period.

Earlier figures on unemployment in Nigeria corroborated this situation as the number of unemployed members of the labour force continued to grow from 12.3% in 2006 to 23.9% in 2011. However, during the same period, Nigeria economy grew strongly at an average annual growth rate in excess of 6.6%, making the country the 5th fastest growing economy in the World in 2010 at 7.87% real growth rate.

What can a reasonable person call this except the paradox of growth? It conflicts rational economic and social theories as well as historical trends. It highlights vividly the structural disequilibrium in the Nigerian economy which has sustained the key productive and high employment sectors below potential while supporting consumerism and rent-seeking.

joudini: ^^ it aint going any down. NK needs some more aids. No matter how batshit crazy they say NK leaders are, self preservation will overrule. Am not sure they wana play with extinction.

oyb: by accident, or design, arik is the only airline left operating - what do you expect them to say?

seanet01: Not a single project in the South West?
Okay o. We siddon dey look.

kutchs: Not only the SE is getting the needed attention, other zones too are not left out at least to the extent I know. The Oturkpo 9th mile road which has been a nightmare to travellers on that road is being worked on. The most troublesome portion has been fixed as they approach Ugbokolo. Now travellers to the SE and SS from the NE have the options of going 2gh Oturkpo or going 2gh the rebuilt Ogoja-Abakiliki road.
Note too that Calabar-Ikom-Ogoja-Katsina Ala is approaching about 45-50% completion which would further reduce the travel time from Benue State to the SS region.
I was recently on the Abakiliki-Afikpo-Okigwe road and mehn! What a joy to travel on that road.

All I can say is thumbs up GEJ YOU ARE THE MAN.

alexleo: I ply Enugu-Ph road frequently and i can tell there is a great improvement. By this time last year it took me between five to six hours to get to Enugu from Ph but these days it takes me about two hours twenty minutes for the same journey. Yeah roads in the south east are receiving speedy attention now. I plied owerri to ph on thursday this week and i can tell you that serious dualization is going on now there. The porthacourt axis dualization has been 99 percent completed to imo boundary. The imo axis is about 50 percent done. I plied Enugu-Anambra last week and one side of it has been reconstructed to a great extent and the traveling hours have reduced very much. And of course OWerri to Onticha is smooth from begining to the end both sides. Akwaibom to Umuahia is receiving serious attention too. Enugu to Ebonyi is currently being dualized and work is seriously going on there. Enugu to Nsukka is very smooth now. No Portholes. GEJ is doing us well, yet we are watching other sectors too to see what he is up to. Light is improving too.

Sincere 9gerian: "Meanwhile, China’s CCECC is building a two-way, standard-gauge line from Lagos to Kano that will allow trains to travel at more than 75 mph"

I know of the Lagos-Ibadan standard guage rail line that was recently awarded but I dont know of this reported ongoing Lagos-Kano standard guage rail line. Does such FG project exist? Or mayb the Lagos-Ibadan recently awarded is a section of the Lagos-Kano? I suspect that should be case.

awodman: That's the terrible situation we have found ourself...the kind of energy and effort SAHARA REPORTERS channel into bringing to light the ills of the government is electrifying.Can't they just channel this same energy towards bringing to our knowledge their 'rights' too..
A whole lot of projects are ongoing ωнεяε this guys should monitor and report what is happening,yet no one does.Projects like the mambilla hydro power plant,portharcourt-enugu-maidugiri rail lines,how have they updated us on the progress of the road recovery projects started in December.
Orubebe just said that almost all of the critical bridges and culvert on the east-west road has been fixed,can't they help to verify this.How about the feasibility studies ƒσя new rail lines can't they track that too.

Like sincerenigerian pointed out,this is one of the numerous way to tackle corruption.Tackling corruption does not just end with prosecuting of convicts.Prevention is also an integral aspect

Standing on the train platform in Lagos with a tiny pink ticket in her hand, Cyrina Kazeem, a 63-year-old grandmother, felt like a wide-eyed child again. More than 50 years ago, before Nigeria’s railway network had fallen into disrepair, her father treated her to a train journey every Christmas.

Now she was preparing for her first rail trip in decades — a 700-mile journey across the most populous country in Africa, from the commercial capital, Lagos, in the south to Kano, the main city in the north.

“My son’s wife in Kano has just had a baby, and I need to go there,” she said. “When I heard the train was running again, I thought: I have to try it. Even if takes 30 hours.

The resumption of the service is the first achievement of a multibillion-dollar effort to revive Nigeria’s railways, whose decline had come to symbolize the rot in the country’s infrastructure. With Chinese contractors leading the way, the colonial-era network is being rehabilitated and new lines built.
“Our railways have been comatose for some time,” said Niyi Alli, the director of operations at the Nigerian Railway Corp. “This is the beginning of their reemergence.

In 2007, the World Bank estimated that fixing the existing narrow-gauge lines could see rail freight jump to 4.6 million tons within four years and passenger numbers to 10 million

Northern Nigeria, home to half the population and a struggling economy, would especially benefit, because items including petrol and food come by road from the southern ports. The region’s produce, such as skins and hides for export, goes back the same way in containers.

Bashir Borodo, a Kano businessman and former president of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, said the resumption of rail freight had already had a “dramatic” effect. “Rates for moving commercial goods on the train are much cheaper than by road,” he said. “It’s a saving grace for the northern economy.”

This trip has been an interesting experience — in a negative way,” said Dada Thomas, a doctor, sitting beside the track. “Externally the train looked very good. But you have to have people who are qualified running the operations.”

That has long been the complaint. The state-owned Nigerian Railway has run at a loss since the 1960s. Experts from India, Romania, Canada, China, Italy, Britain and the United States have been hired to help revitalize the service, with no lasting success. Privatization plans have never been realized.

“We have had everyone here — and now it’s the Chinese,” said Rowland Ataguba, a transport consultant in the capital, Abuja. “The only people who have benefited are consultants like me, contractors and their political friends

The roads have become congested and degraded, with transport costs, times and the accident rate
increasing

KANO, Nigeria — Standing on the train platform in Lagos with a tiny pink ticket in her hand, Cyrina Kazeem, a 63-year-old grandmother, felt like a wide-eyed child again. More than 50 years ago, before Nigeria’s railway network had fallen into disrepair, her father treated her to a train journey every Christmas.

Now she was preparing for her first rail trip in decades — a 700-mile journey across the most populous country in Africa, from the commercial capital, Lagos, in the south to Kano, the main city in the north.

“My son’s wife in Kano has just had a baby, and I need to go there,” she said. “When I heard the train was running again, I thought: I have to try it. Even if takes 30 hours.”

Kazeem is not the only one who is excited. Since it reopened in December, the twice-weekly route linking the country’s two largest cities has been nearly fully booked, with passengers attracted by the low prices — at $12, a second-class ticket is less than half the cost of the cheapest bus fare — and the relative comforts and safety of long-distance rail travel.

The resumption of the service is the first achievement of a multibillion-dollar effort to revive Nigeria’s railways, whose decline had come to symbolize the rot in the country’s infrastructure. With Chinese contractors leading the way, the colonial-era network is being rehabilitated and new lines built.

“Our railways have been comatose for some time,” said Niyi Alli, the director of operations at the Nigerian Railway Corp. “This is the beginning of their reemergence.”

Yet in an age of high-speed rail, where travel at more than 124 mph is normal, the train to Kano chugs along at 31 mph. That this is celebrated as progress in Nigeria illustrates not only the state of the railways but also the difficulty of effecting real reform in the opaque, state-run sectors of the economy.

Service shut down in 2009

Completed under British rule 100 years ago, the Lagos-Kano route helped in the development of Nigeria’s agriculture- and minerals-based economy. But the service declined soon after independence because of mismanagement and government neglect. By the time it was shut down in 2009, the number of annual passenger rail trips in Nigeria had fallen to 1.3 million, down from 11.3 million in 1963. The drop in goods moved was even steeper, from 3.3 million tons to a mere 57,000 tons. In the continent’s second-biggest economy, growing consistently at more than 6 percent a year, rail transport was effectively dead.

Resurrection of the Lagos-Kano service took nearly three years instead of the planned 10 months, with China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. (CCECC) and Costain West Africa, a local company, splitting the $153 million government contract.

Even given the train’s slow speed — a function of the curves, gradient and narrow-gauge track — a reliable freight service would boost the economy. The roads have become congested and degraded, with transport costs, times and the accident rate increasing. In 2007, the World Bank estimated that fixing the existing narrow-gauge lines could see rail freight jump to 4.6 million tons within four years and passenger numbers to 10 million

Northern Nigeria, home to half the population and a struggling economy, would especially benefit, because items including petrol and food come by road from the southern ports. The region’s produce, such as skins and hides for export, goes back the same way in containers.

Bashir Borodo, a Kano businessman and former president of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, said the resumption of rail freight had already had a “dramatic” effect. “Rates for moving commercial goods on the train are much cheaper than by road,” he said. “It’s a saving grace for the northern economy.”

At the rundown Iddo station in Lagos, the journey’s starting point, little appears to have changed since independence. A handwritten fare list is tacked to the notice board, ticketing is manual, and the plant pots have the date “1956” painted on them.

But the trains reflect the new world economic order. When Kazeem was a child, the equipment was British. The sleeper carriage she boarded shortly before the noon departure from Lagos this month was made in China, and the locomotive in Brazil.

During her trip, the sweltering second-class carriage was packed with families, with some forced to sit in the aisle. With no running water on the train, the toilet facilities were soon a mess. Farther back, passengers in the air-conditioned first-class section, which included four policemen to guard the train, watched a Nigerian film.

‘So much better than the bus’

By late afternoon, workers in the restaurant car were stirring semolina fufu in a large pot. Music flowed from the bar, where Emmanuel Okewu, a 21-year-old shoemaker, had a Turbo King beer in one hand and a bottle of gin in the other.

“This is so much better than the bus,” he said.

Kazeem paid $31 for a berth in a first-class sleeper cabin, which had two beds, air-conditioning and private toilet with a jerrycan of water to wash. She shared it with a woman she met on the train. They agreed that Kazeem would take the top berth. After putting on a pair of black tights for modesty, she tried and failed to climb up, and instead slept on the chair.

When Kazeem woke in the morning, the train stopped because of a fault in its brake system.

“This trip has been an interesting experience — in a negative way,” said Dada Thomas, a doctor, sitting beside the track. “Externally the train looked very good. But you have to have people who are qualified running the operations.”

That has long been the complaint. The state-owned Nigerian Railway has run at a loss since the 1960s. Experts from India, Romania, Canada, China, Italy, Britain and the United States have been hired to help revitalize the service, with no lasting success. Privatization plans have never been realized.

“We have had everyone here — and now it’s the Chinese,” said Rowland Ataguba, a transport consultant in the capital, Abuja. “The only people who have benefited are consultants like me, contractors and their political friends.”

But this time, the government insists that the efforts to revive the railways are genuine. The Port Harcourt-Maiduguri line is also being fixed by Turkish, Chinese and local contractors. Meanwhile, China’s CCECC is building a two-way, standard-gauge line from Lagos to Kano that will allow trains to travel at more than 75 mph.

For passengers on the stranded train, any speed would have been welcome. By 7:30 a.m., some had left to continue their journey by bus. At 8 a.m., a new locomotive was hooked up. “In Jesus’s name, we are going!” said N. Jiya, the driver. Within a few hours, the train had passed into Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north.

Mariam Moussa, a 53-year-old trader from Kano, had boarded a train to Lagos for the first time in her life two weeks previously to buy cloth, shoes and handbags to resell. On her return trip, she paid $12 to put her stock in the freight car, about half of what it would have cost to transport it by road.

“The train is cheaper and much safer than the bus. It’s a very positive service for poor people,” she said.

As night fell, Kano was still many hours away. Kazeem dozed off. At 3 a.m., 39 hours after leaving Lagos, the train shuddered to a final halt. Kazeem stood at the window of her cabin, smiling, in no rush to get off.

Godogwu: So what you're saying Is that 60% of Nigerians do nothing.... ( that's according to reports) but nahh i still don't believe that. Even if there's a percentage, its probably not up to 40 percent.

nex: Is this not an OBJ project? Nice that after being abandoned at near completion since Obasanjo left office, they have finally decided to launch it in April. I knew Yar'Adua suspended all OBJ's power projects in order to investigate them and prove the transparency of the NIPP contracts, but under GEJ, who doesn't "give a damn" about transparency, I wonder why those projects which were almost ready for launch, like the one in Ihovbor, Edo State, were still being stalled.

I hope all those accusing OBJ of stealing billions of Naira meant for the power sector can now see that it was the shoeless one, and his late due process predecessor who actually kept us in the dark.

POLICE CAP: I used to believe in this man, but not any more...
He is too loyal to so many godfathers

I wonder which of his colleagues generator importation business he'll hamper just for constant power supply

And besides, since he came into office, which of his projects has been completed?

ewet: The truth is tht this was not a GEJ project and the FG was only required to fund 5% of the project while the devt partners-ADB,WB and japan's agency for international devt.Dont come here trying to deceive evrybody cos we all aint dumb asses like your GEJ club of brainless people.This is a i am posting to set the record straight. http://www.voanews.com/content/cameroon-nigeria-highway-designed-to-boost-trade-between-west-and-central-africa--115929449/159744.html
The thread you posted was just a publicity stunt by your cluless GEJ goons but tell them thy aint fooling no one.Now tell me who shuld know beta about this, VOA or vanguard newspapers tht could easily be paid to release this misinformation.

omonnakoda: We will not allow lies or ignorant clowns to prevail.
The African Development Bank funded this project
http://www.mbendi.com/a_sndmsg/news_view.asp?I=108725&PG=35

and there is no arrangement to pay back the money. There is no need to lie . We are happy for the project whose construction work commenced on the 17th of June 2010 and feasibility studies comleted much earlier but we reject any attempt for the incumbent government to claim credit for the road when they have not been able to complete THEIR OWN roads eg.

East West Road
Port Harcourt Aba Enugu
Benin Sagamu
Lagos Ibadan
the list is endless. How can a government that cannot fix its own road now come and claim what they did not do.

The government was supposed to provide counterpart funding. Rather than put money into a common pool so the Chinese contractor will do the entire project. They insisted on being in control of their own contribution i.e they (FG) would rehabilitate Enugu Abakaliki road at a cost (lacking transparency) that is impossible to verify. They handed the contract to Sertraco. We can observe the quality of the work done. It is a fact that much of the route for that road is prone to landslides and we hope the engineers took that into account in the job they did.

Let the government and their paid hacks on Nairaland show us videos or photos of ONE just ONE we beg road that they can claim to have completed in Nigeria instead of claiming credit for the work of others