After wasting US$427 million in a refurbishment that failed to revive the tracks, let alone modernise them, the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) is bent on reconstruction using the same narrow gauge design, even with questionable safety standards
The Nigerian railway system is as old as modern civilisation in this part of the globe, but it has failed to unit the nation into a prosperous commercial entity, but appears rather to have partitioned the country along north-to-south ridges of estranged rail zones. For the exception of the rail linkage between Kafanchan and Kaduna in the north, which knots the western tracks with the eastern side, the rail dichotomy between Nigeria’s east and west appears deliberate to create unequal economically advantaged zones. In all the challenges bedevilling the rail transportation system in Nigeria, the western rail corridor, which runs from Lagos to Kano, has received unequal attension, making it the most functional, while the rail line from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri lies mostly neglected, abandoned or second-class. Moreso, notwithstanding the high tonnage of goods and human traffick across the southern belt of Nigeria, it beats reasoning why there is no rail connection from, say, Calabar to Lagos, considering that this region hosts the highest number of economic activities as well as being the link to the various sea ports in Nigeria.
A survey of Nigeria’s rail lines shows that our rail lines are mostly of colonial British Cape gauge of which there is a total of 3,505 km national railway network, in additon to 669 km of modern standard gauge lines. First constructed in Nigeria by the British colonial government in March 1896, the rail lines started from the Lagos Colony to Ibadan. The Lagos rail station was connected with Minna in 1911, to meet the Baro–Kano Railway Station built by the then government of Northern Nigeria. The rail lines were later amalgamated in 1912 as Government Department of Railways, which later became the Nigerian Railway Corporation.The Port Harcourt-Enugu rail line was built by the Eastern Nigeria government from 1913 to 1916 due to the discovery of coal at Udi. The Eastern rail line was later extended to Kafanchan, crossed the Lagos-Kano line to Kaduna in 1927, then continued from Kafanchan to Nguru in 1930 and reached its Maiduguri terminus in 1964.
Nigeria’s first standard gauge rail line, the Warri–Itakpe Railway, initiated in 1987, was to convey iron ore from Itakpe to the Ajaokuta Steel Mill, while enabling the transportation of imported coal from Warri sea port to Ajaokuta. It was completed in 2020 after years of construction delays.The rail transportation infrastructure in Nigeria has suffered setbacks fundamentally due to its design layout, followed by mismanagement, a poor maintenance culture that almost amounted to abandonment, and is set for further setbacks due to the absence of design uniformity in the current modernisation efforts. As if these were not enough, it is currently entangled in a survival struggle with vandalism in various parts of the country.To start with, in its operational hay days, rail link for port cities of Lagos, Warri and Port Harcourt was only possible via the Kafanchan-Kaduna linkage in far away north, a situation that made haulage by rail across the Nigerian southern corridor uneconomical and time wasting.
After years of infrastructure decay and near abandonment, when Nigeria appears to have awoken to rebuild its vital means of commerce, it began so in line with previous mistakes. The old Cape gauge lines, popularly called narrow gauge lines are out-dated, colonial 1,067mm-wide tracks, that run equally out-dated 1,067mm-wide rail cars, while the standard gauge rails are modern 1435mm-wide tracks that run 1435mm-wide rail cars, offering greater speed, stability, and payload. Rail cars for the standard gauge can not run on the narrow guage, and vise versa, meaning that where goods are to be transported between these rail guages, loads would have to be manually transferred between narrow and wide rail cars.Efficiency in modern rail lines around the world is achieved based on uniform network of rail tracks using the standard guage installed two-ways to enable greater round-trips and for seamless connectivities. Nigeria wasted US$427 million in 2009 to refurbish the Port Harcourt – Maiduguri line with same old narrow guage, which has since broken down.
That huge sum should have been invested in the modern standard gauge, even if it covered a smaller portion, from where later investments could have extended the tracks.However, the Lagos-Kano line has been reconstructed to the modern standard guage, with modern train stations and clean, air-conditioned train coaches that feature overhead display screens, classified compartments, as well as window-side USB charging ports and power suckets. The 187 km Kaduna – Abuja segment, which opened officially on July 26, 2016, alone gulped US$870 million, while the Kano terminus, under the auspices of Portugal’s Mota-Engil SGPS SA, was extended ealier this year to Maradi, a large city in neighbouring Niger Republic. In taste of things yet to come, the 157 km Lagos-Ibadan railway was inaugurated on June 10, 2021 as the first two-way track in Nigeria.The story on the Port Harcourt – Maiduguri side remains unfortunate.
After wasting US$427 million in a refurbishment that failed to revive the tracks, let alone modernise them, the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) is bent on reconstruction using the same narrow gauge design, even with questionable safety standards. The ancient tracks were supported on steel plates, while in the current reconstruction, the tracks are now being laid on narrow, reinforced concrete slabs, which will not stand the vibrations and stress of rail operations, as compared with the ruggedity of steel support plates. And with the two-side drainages being constructed too close to the tracks in some areas, it’s possible the ground support base might give way under bulk loads, a situation that might lead to fatal accidents.One may now ask, “Why the different measure for the Port Harcourt – Maiduguri rail corridor?” Why should not the coal mines at Udi be linked by rail to Ajaokuta steel mill, instead of resorting to importation?
It becomes more worrisome considering that with the implementation of on-going reconstruction of the eastern rails, the NRC appears not to have any plans, even in the foreseeable future, of unifying the Nigerian rails into a homogeneous network. One also wonders why, the immediate past Transportation Minister, Rt Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, who spearheaded the commendable modernisations on the Lagos-Kano tracks, as well as the completion of the Warri – Itakpe railway, was not given the opportunity of doing same on the Port Harcourt – Maiduguri flank, while his proposal for a much valuable East-West railway, along the southern belt, was rejected?

By: Joseph Nwankwor