The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has disclosed that the Federal Government has completed about 700 kilometres of rail line in the country since 2015.
Amaechi, who disclosed this to newsmen in Abuja yesterday, said the mileage was part of about 6,000-kilometre rain line which the present administration planned to complete before 2023.
He named the Abuja-Kaduna Railway, the Itakpe-Warri and the Lagos-Ibadan as the projects that had been completed.
According to him, over N1 billion has been paid into a special account as the ministrys contribution to the repayment of loan the federal government took from multilateral lenders for the rail projects.
His words: We have awarded a contract to three more companies if you add the ones I have mentioned and the project is the 225 kilometres Itape-Warri rail line. The one from Lagos to Ibadan is 156 kilometres; then the one from Abuja-Kaduna is about 186 kilometres. Therefore, we have close to 700 kilometres of rail completed and carrying out commercial activities.
Within this period as the 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 N200million per month, he further stated.
