The minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Nyesom Wike, has promised that required funding would be provided to ensure the rapid completion of the Abuja metro rail systems.
He disclosed this while taking a tour of the rail transport systems in Abuja with the FCT minister of state Mariya Mahmood and staff of the FCTA on Wednesday, August 23, 2023,
Wike also described rehabilitation of the rail transport system as a short-term goal of his administration.
“Transport is one of those things that we can do in order to reduce the level of traffic within the city, and we know that we have this metro station here, and it’s not working. Why is it not working? Can we fix it within the short term so that people will say yes, this is now working.
“So, our position is that whatever it is, the company that it has been awarded, we will sit down to say for how long do you think you can complete this and then ask ourselves, do we have the resources to make sure that we don’t come back to explain to members of the public, this is why it was not finished,” he said.
Commissioned by former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari in 2018, the Abuja Rail Mass Transit was aimed at relieving transportation challenges for residents of the city.
The rail systems were estimated to cost about $824, with 60 per cent of the sum to be sourced from the Exim Bank of China.
Work, however, stopped on the Abuja Rail Mass Transit for nearly three years, leaving residents to struggle with the scarcely insufficient number of commercial vehicles in the FCT.
This is despite the creation of the Abuja Urban Mass Transport Company, which mostly filed due to a lack of proper planning, The ICIR reported in December 2021.
Ijeoma Opara is a journalist with The ICIR. Reach her via [email protected] or @ije_le on Twitter.