Abuja—Minister of Transportation, Mr Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, yesterday, disclosed that the Federal Government has concluded plans to award the contract for the construction of the Lagos-Ibadan railway project.
Amaechi, who said this at the one year memorial lecture in honour of former General Secretary of Alliance for Credible Election, ACE-Nigeria, late Comrade Emma Ezeazu, in Abuja, said contracts for Kano-Kaduna and Calabar-Port Harcourt railway projects would also be signed before the end of this week.
The memorial lecture with theme: ‘Advancing the Frontiers of Progressive Governance’, was organised by Emma Ezeazu Mandate Group.
The former governor of Rivers State, explained that “the President’s agenda is not just to recover loots. We are recovering as much as we can. But the president is determined to create employment. That is why you can see his focus. In transportation, from Kaduna to Abuja, we have created over 700 workforce. What did I do? I said all the villages or those communities along the route; I said they should give them level six down.”
Speaking further, he said “their job is to march on that railway from the beginning to the end to see there was no security breach. The rest of the applicants will go online to apply for the jobs. They said if we publish it, people will die the way it happened during immigration recruitment exercise and they will say Amaechi should resign.
“This year, we will start the Lagos-Ibadan, railway project. You know the difference between us and the rest, we will not say ‘go and start’, we will look for counterpart funding.”
On how the project will be funded, he said “We will bring our counterpart fund as poor as the country is now and give to the Chinese because their money is already in their bank account. It is for us to bring our own. If we bring our own, they bring their own to make sure there is no delay, we will bring all our own to give them and say ‘go and start work’.”
“If that happened in two years, the Lagos-Ibadan will be ready. Tomorrow, I will sign the contracts for Calabar-Port Harcourt railway project. Before the week runs out, I will sign Kano-Kduna. That is what we are doing. This is to show you that we are moving away from the corruption economy to production economy
