The Minister of Transportation, Sen. Sa’idu Alkali has said that railway freight operations from seaports in Lagos to Kano are due to resume in the next three months.
The minister said this during his visit to the Kajola Wagon Assembly Plant in Ogun, on Tuesday.
He noted that the Lagos- Ibadan service would use the standard gauge to carry cargo and will begin the operation from Apapa to Kano in three months, citing that meetings have resumed with the Nigerian Shippers Council over freight prices.
The minister noted that the Federal Government had already fixed the narrow gauge from Lagos to Kano, and will now get some locomotives and wagons to take containers from Apapa and move them to Kano
“Once we evacuate containers from Lagos, we will use the narrow gauge to move them to Kano,” he said.
He also directed the Managing Director of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), Fidet Okhiria, to look into the cleanliness of the coaches, to enhance patronage on railways, urging that the Nigerian Shippers’ Council, being the port economic regulator, and the former Minister of Transportation set up a ministerial committee headed by the former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Transportation to look into freight charges.
The Nigerian Economy reports that railway infrastructure at the Apapa Port Complex in Lagos have been fixed since the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, which revived the narrow gauge railway from Lagos to Kano after about two decades of comatose. Since that time, shippers have been relunctant to use the service.
