10 years on, Lagos light rail bears diminishing hope for 22m residents

Ten years after the Lagos State government set out in 2009 to build a light rail system as an urgent necessity to move its burgeoning population, the Blue Line rail, which initial cost was put at $1.2 billion, seems to bear no hope.

It was planned as 27km line, with 13 stations from Okokomaiko to Marina. The phase 1 and 2 of this rail line would cover a distance of 12km which will include a 4km (2.5-mile) viaduct and have five stations.

The Blue Line rail was conceived to address mobility challenges, stimulate economic growth and job creation while improving the environment and air quality of the city. It was to carry 400,000 passengers with capacity increased to 700,000 passengers daily at completion.

One decade after, these anticipated gains from the rail project have continued to elude the estimated 22 million residents of the state and its economy, as precious manhour and billions of naira are daily and annually lost in gridlock.

Funding for the rail system, according to officials, has been more from Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). But a document seen by Businessday also shows that a chunk of the development loans obtained from the World Bank between 2011 and 2016, to the tune of about $593.3 million, also went into the light rail. But it remains at the construction stage since 2009 when the civil works began, as the elevated section crossing the lagoon from Iganmu to Marina continues to crawl, although the rail track and stations from Orile to Mile 2, being the first phase, had been completed.

According to a source, about N75 billion was invested in the light rail as at 2015 when Babatunde Fashola, a former governor and initiator of the project, left office, while under Akinwunmi Ambode, his successor in office, N19 billion was injected. By 2019 when Ambode left office, the contractor handling the project, CCECC, was said to be owed about N45 billion, forcing it to move its personnel and equipment from the site.

When compared with the Addis Ababa light rail in Ethiopia, the Lagos light rail speaks to how Nigeria and its sub-nationals continue to lag behind peers.

The light rail system in Addis Ababa, a 17km (11 mi) line, which runs from the city centre to industrial areas in the south of the city, opened in September 2015 after it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, and began service on November 9, 2015 for the second line (west-east). The total length of both lines is 31.6 kilometres (19.6 mi), with 39 stations. The railway was contracted to the China Railway Group Limited and the Ethiopian Railways Corporation and began construction of the double track electrified light rail transit project in December 2011, after securing funds from the Export-import Bank of China.

The Blue Line rail, some analysts say, signifies wasted economic opportunities.

Timothy Olawale, directorgeneral, Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA), said the fact that the light rail has not translated to a reality after a decade defines the daily losses in gridlock being experienced on the Badagry axis.

“It is unfortunate that the situation that the light rail system was conceived to salvage has become worse today compared to 10 years ago,” said Olawale.

The implication of this, he said, is that neither the economy nor the mass of the population that the project targeted to relief from their