President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday performed the ground-breaking ceremony of the Kano–Dutse–Jibia (Katsina State) – Maradi 284 Km rail project connecting Kano in Nigeria to Maradi in Niger Republic, virtually.
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Okechukwu Nnodim, Abuja
The Federal Government is to partly fund six rail projects connecting virtually all regions of the country with a counterpart funding of N71.15bn this year.
Also, N15.1bn will be spent on the development of safety and security critical projects, airport certification, runway construction, terminal building, among others in the aviation sector in 2021.
A report on selected projects in the 2021 budget obtained by our correspondent from the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning in Abuja showed that in the rail sector, the government had mapped out six projects that it would partly fund this year.
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An investigation has shown that the average cost per kilometer (km) of the newly contracted Kano-Maradi rail line exceeds similar projects under the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), as estimated by the African Union (AU) by, at least, 100 per cent.
The Federal Government, recently, announced that it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Mota-Engil Group for the construction of the 283.75 Kano-Maradi standard-gauge rail at a contract cost of $1.959 billion.
Experts kick as FG signs $1.96bn Kano-Maradi rail project MoU
Okechukwu Nnodim and Joseph Olaoluwa
The Federal Government on Monday announced that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Mota-Engil Group for the construction of the $1.959bn Kano-Maradi standard gauge rail project.
Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, signed on behalf of the Federal Government, while the Managing Director, Mota-Engil, Antonio Gvoea, signed on behalf of the contracting firm.
However, pan-Yoruba sociocultural group, Afenifere, kicked against the move, saying that with so much deficit in the country’s transport infrastructure, the government was headed the wrong direction with the rail project.