Is the railway finally on track?

Ihad long given up on the notion that we would ever have a decent railway as a mode of travel. However, two recent events coincided to have me pick up interest and raise my hopes in the railways. The first was an exploratory trip I took on the Abuja-Kaduna line. Considering the fact that the last time I was in a train in this country was in July 1977 when I completed my term in the NYSC in Lagos and had taken the train from Idumota to Zaria where I was to take up a teaching appointment in Kongo Campus, ABU Zaria. The latest journey from Abuja to Kaduna took me completely by surprise because I found the trains to be comparable to many other train journeys I have undertaken in some other countries. The coaches were comfortable and neat and there were genuine attempts to deliver minimum decent services to the passengers.

The other event was a meeting I had with Eng. Usman Abubakar, the Chairman Board of Directors of the Nigerian Railways. I had picked up an interview he gave the BBC Hausa service where I heard him assuring that the success of the Abuja-Kaduna will definitely be replicated all over the country. In the interview he gave elaborate explanations complete with time lines on what to expect as plans to put the railways finally on track. It was an exciting piece of news which prompted me to get across to him for further reassurance.

On the way to the rendezvous with the Chairman my mind went back to my childhood to a time when the railway was a normal form of travel in this country. In the 1960s you could go anywhere by road in the country or alternatively you could take the train from these furthest points of the North, Maiduguri, Nguru, Kano and Gusau and from Lagos and Port-Harcourt from down south or in any of the stations dotted along the routes. Wherever you took the train you would be assured of criss-crossing the country conveniently and in a fairly pleasant manner. Air travel was not as developed as we know it today, though in Maiduguri where I was born and raised, we had an airport even before the 2nd World War.

When I went to secondary school to Keffi Government College in the late-1960s the train was my favourite form of travel from Maiduguri. My father would have me driven to the railway station where a warrant would be purchased for me to travel from Maiduguri all the way to Gudi, the railway junction just a few kilometres to Keffi. In many instances when I came into the train I would find my school mates among the multitude of passengers all set for the long journey. The train would take us through Gombe, Bauchi and Jos, snaking through those high altitudes many of us from our flat plains in the semidesert would find unfamiliar though exciting, down to Gudi railway junction. At every station along the way the number of our students would continue to increase until we reached Gudi, where all would disembark to locate our school lorry at stand by in the train station, sent to pick us for the short run to the college.

My mind also went back to the day Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa came to commission the Maiduguri Railway Terminus in 1964 and the sense of disappointment I felt because I could not partake of the celebrations. I was a class 5 student in Yerwa Senior Primary School near the Dandal Gate which was a walking distance from where the ceremonies were taking place in Lamisula ward but my size was considered too small to join the bigger boys who were marched off to welcome the Prime Minister.

I later found out that the Prime Minister considered commissioning the Maiduguri Railway Terminus important enough for him to perform personally probably because he was directly involved at the planning stage of the project when he served as the Transport Minister in 1950s. The Federal Government then considered the Maiduguri line of high priority not really for only human transportation but far more importantly for efficient bulk cargo haulage which included livestock (cattle, goats, sheep) and dried fish for local markets and groundnuts, livestock hides and Gum Arabic for foreign markets. In those years these commodities were in abundance in Borno.

What happened to the railways from the late-1970s was simply incredulous. While other parts of the transport sector such as roads, aviation and the ports were making quantum progress, the railways just stagnated for years and then regressed to this terrible level. All my children, with the first born in 1981, have never used the railway. Most of them only know trains as they see them on television. It must have been an appalling state of affairs for this noble mode of transportation to be brought so low. At its peak the railway in Nigeria had solid infrastructure spread across the country: 3000km of narrow gauge lines, tens of locomotives, many workshops and warehouses. It was said to be moving some 15 million passengers and 3 million tons of freight per annum and directly employed 45,000 people and indirectly another 250,000. Sadly, at its nadir, the railway could only move less than 1 million passengers and less than 50,000 tons of freight in outmoded and antiquated wagons. We were still stuck with the narrow gauge lines allowing the use of those smokey, noisy and ponderous locomotive trains trudging at less than 40 km per hour. All over the country one would only see abandoned wagons, workshops, warehouses and washed away rail tracks. In fact the Railway Station in Maiduguri, due to its abandoned condition, even became the hub of Boko Haram operations at the inception of the insurgency - Mohammed Yusuf the infamous leader of the group had his home a stone-throw away from the main offices of the railway. The initial battle to dislodge the murderous group was all fought within the railway vicinity.

It is these and related issues that I raised with the Chairman when we met. I am glad we met because a lot of my misgivings about the capacity of the railway to deliver were cleared away. The plans are all out in the media. Suffice to say here that the Nigerian Railway is out to take its place among the transport modes by becoming a world class organization providing a safe, efficient, affordable, reliable, widely linked network. It is poised to improve the quality of rail infrastructure for freight and passengers in a modernizing blitz which will also see to the linking of all state capitals and major economic centres to the rail network. It will also link all international cargo airports, sea and river ports to the rail network. It will deliver the Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge this year and continue the rehabilitation works on the old lines and when completed will be let out under a program of concession.

For me it is not the plan details that excite but the delivery. Over the years we have witnessed and endured a lot of failed promises. However if one considers that the railway is under the purview of the Ministry of Transport that had recently made a timely delivery on a promise on the rehabilitation of Nnamdi Azikwe Airport, then we have an assurance that the railway will finally be on track.