The Lagos State Governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola, has reiterated the need for the Federal Government to pay more attention to the revival of the rail transport system in Nigeria, as it remains the most viable means of transporting heavy cargo, especially petroleum products, across the country.
Fashola made the call on Sunday while inspecting the abandoned Nigerian Railway Corporation Maintenance Yard in Apapa, Lagos State.
The Nigerian Railway Corporation Maintenance Yard was established by the British colonialists with a network of rail lines leading from the Apapa Industrial Estate and on which heavy cargo is brought into and taken out of the Ports for delivery across the country.
The Yard and its surroundings are overgrown with weed while the entire area, including abandoned and decaying coaches, have been turned into living hovels by people.
Governor Fashola told reporters that he was at the site to evaluate the entire project for the purpose of resuscitating and bringing it back to life.
He said that the State Government would make a comprehensive report to the Federal Government on what needed to be done in order to make the rail system effective and efficient.
The Governor, who was conducted round the facility by the Chairman, Lagos State Taskforce on the Environment and Special Offences (Enforcement) Unit, CSP Adebayo Sulaiman, maintained that road transportation was not the best way to move cargo across the country. He expressed regrets that the Federal Government had deliberately turned its back on rail transportation, preferring to continue to move petroleum products by road with the attendant hazards.
“This is a project that we departed from as a people. This is the Nigerian Railway Corporation Maintenance Yard which also leads out of the Apapa Industrial Area. This is where goods from Apapa were evacuated when I was a child. This is what the Federal Government has walked away from.
“We are trying to see how we can get it working again. We want to get the Federal Government to come back here and revamp it. We must do everything in our power to deemphasize road haulage as means of transporting heavy cargo, especially petroleum products, across the country,” he said.
The Governor said revamping the railway at Apapa would not only reduce the enormous pressure on Lagos and Nigerian roads as a result of road haulage of cargo but would also create jobs for the scores of people currently idling away around the facility and living under very unhygienic conditions.
On the environmental situation in the area, Governor Fashola, attributed it to what he called “our country’s economic choices” and stressed that if the Federal Government had made the right choice of putting the Yard into good use, the environmental situation in the area would not have been created in the first place.
The Federal Government, some months back, bought several coaches to boost the rail transport system, but some other infrastructures needed to make the service efficient and effective, like the maintenance yard, had been left unattended to.
