NASS frowns at rail infrastructure vandalization

…defends FG’s appetite for foreign loans

Nigeria’s National assembly committee on land transport drawn from the senate and House of Representatives has once again reiterated the need for proper maintenance of railway infrastructure across the country.

Buhari Abdulfatai, a senator and chairman, national assembly joint committee on land transportation, frowned at the indiscriminate removal of infrastructures put in place for use within the rail corridor by criminal elements last Thursday when he led members of the committee to the Lagos headquarters of Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC).

Abdulfatai also defended federal government’s penchant for taking foreign loans to execute developmental infrastructure. He pointed out that, it is important to ensure proper maintenance of the railway infrastructure and equipment, adding that, the purpose of their tour of the infrastructure site is to find out how well the budget for the project was spent.

He commended the management of NRC for the judicious use of fund, assuring that, the corporation deserves to get more funding to achieve more.

“In a matter of weeks the budget will be coming to the National Assembly, and then we are here to see what has happened to the budget of last year. That is the conclusion of it, because they have really done well. We don’t want to start doing something so that it will look as praise-singing,” the NASS joint committee on land transport chairman declared.

Abdulfatai highlighted the progress made so far in the development of the railway system in Nigeria. According to him, “Lagos-Ibadan is now running four times. Look at it, the Itakpe-Warri is now running. Abuja to Kaduna is running perfectly.

The team from the legislative arm of government which had earlier visited the headquarters of the Nigeria Railway Corporation, where they met and had discussions with NRC top management led by Fidet Okhiria, the NRC managing director concluded their oversight visit with an inspection tour to the Bola Ahmed Tinubu train station in Apapa aboard standard gauge rail train on the completed and functional standard gauge rail tracks.

MIKE OCHONMA

Transport Editor