NIGERIA-TRANSPORT: A Railway Network That Used to be Good

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Remi Oyo

ALAGBADO, Nigeria, Jul 24 1997 (IPS) - Its 5.30 a.m. local time and the train station here is as busy as a market at noon: school children, workers and market women, some with babies strapped to their backs, jostle for a vantage point near the railway line.

Half an hour later, the train arrives and the struggle to board it begins. By the time the jostling ends, about 50 people are seated shoulder to shoulder and some 60 standing passengers are crammed in the aile in each of its nine coaches.

Only 41 locomotives are still running out of the 160 owned by the Nigeria Railway Authority, and they are old. The coaches are in various stages of disrepair: the seats are torn, the windows are broken and the floors have lost their tiles.

But at least the train still runs from Alagbado to Iddo, two Lagos neighbourhoods separated by about 40 kms. As it prepares to begin its journey, the pickpockets go into action. “I have lost my purse,” one woman shouts. “… It’s only my ticket left in my hand … I have lost all my money.”

No one appears to pay any attention to her as the train moves off towards stations that have seen better days.

Radio communication networks in some of the stations are so outdated that they hardly work. “They frequently break down when the electricity supply fails,” a worker at one of them tells IPS.

“Stations are supposed to have public address systems but only the ones at Alagbado and Ebute-Metta (also in Greater Lagos) are still functioning,” says an official at the following station.

As the train continues on its way to Iddo, traders do brisk business in the coaches, selling anything from malaria cures to water, while the preachers of the gospel shout out their messages.

Midway into the journey, the train stops, reverses and stops again to allow — as IPS later learns — another train from the mining city of Jos to pass. No one seems to mind. They appear used to the delays.

“It is still faster and cheaper than going through traffic jams on the roads and the exhorbitant fares of the buses,” explains insurance broker Alamu Akerele.

The train fare from Alagbado to Iddo is 15 naira. The same journey by bus costs around 80 naira (one U.S. dollar) and twice as much when there is a fuel shortage. The difference means a lot in a country where the public service minimum wage, including allowances, is 1,000 naira a month.

Moreover, the journey by road can take as much as two hours because of traffic jams, whereas the train ride lasts 48 minutes.

“Once you get used to it, you will protect yourself against the petty thieves and market women whose wares can stain your shirt or trousers,” Akerele tells IPS.

However, he adds “I wish the government can do more to improve rail transportation. It will fuel the country’s growth. First of all it is ridiculous that there is only one working track that runs through the city.” There used to be three.

Time was when Nigeria’s railway service was in good shape. In fact, until the early 1970s, it was the main mode of long- distance travel, providing cheap, reliable transport for 60 percent of passengers and goods between the north of the country and the coast in the south.

In 1973-1974, Nigeria’s railways carried more than five million passengers and 1.6 million tonnes of freight. Now they ferry a mere 1.4 million people and barely 142,000 tonnes of goods annually.

With help from China, the government plans to wipe out the effects of over three decades of neglect, Nigeria Railway Corporation officials say.

According to Greg Ilukwe, the Corporation’s sole administrator, 10 locomotives, 20 rail cars and five passenger coaches have been received so far under an agreement between the Transport Ministry and the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation.

Speaking at a recent ceremony here at which the locomotives were handed over, Ilukwe said various pieces of equipment had been moved to construction sites where the Chinese company is upgrading the national rail network of more than 3,500 kms.

Under the project, which started in December 1995 and is expected to be completed by mid-1998, “about 700 Chinese experts, spread out across the country, are supported by about 4,000 Nigerians,” Ilukwe said.

Chen Xiaoxing, deputy managing director of the Chinese company, pledged that 70 percent of the 50 engines and 80 percent of the 100 passenger coaches and 400 wagons would be delivered by yearend.

The project costs about 10 million dollars, which Ilukwe hopes the often indebted Nigeria Railway Corporation will be able to recoup as a result of the expected increase in freight and passenger traffic.