The Federal Government said it has completed about 700kilometre of railway lines currently running commercial activities within the country.

Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, said the mileage was part of about 5000km to 6000km of rail projects the administration planned to embark on. He named the Abuja -Kaduna Railway,  Itape-Warri and Lagos-Ibadan rails as projects that had been completed by the administration.

He said  over N1 billion has been paid into a special account as the ministry’s contribution to repay part of the loan collected for the rail projects.

”We have awarded a contract to three more companies, if you add this ones I have mentioned, and one is 225km Itape-Warri, one from Lagos to Ibadan is 156km, then the one from Abuja-Kaduna is about 186km, so close to 700km of rail completed and carrying out commercial activities.

”Within this period as minister, we have never paid money to the government, but we got to the Ministry of Finance and asked them to open an account where we pay money every month as our own contribution for repayment of the loan. And I think we have gotten over N1 billion already in the last few months. Every month that we pay, we are able to return close to N200 million per month,” Amaechi said.

He said the Federal Government was already negotiating for new facilities to construct the rail from Ibadan to Kano.

Over N205 billion was earmarked in the budget for the transportation sector to help address the huge rail infrastructure deficit in Nigeria.

Source: The Sun