The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has said that the commissioning of the Lagos-Ibadan rail line would no longer hold due to the spread of covid-19 among staff of the construction company handling by the project.
Amaechi, who disclosed this at a Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) in Abuja on Monday said over 60 staff on project site have been infected by COVID-19 while trying to complete the project.
He said: “First let us admit that over 60 of our staff, not ministry of transport staff, but the staff working on the rail project have been infected by Covid, luckily nobody has died and I pray nobody will die, but you see the kind of sacrifice everybody is making to get the rail to function.
“They are people sacrificing their lives to get to that point, we are of the view when we made that decision that Nigeria will not say 2020 was a bad year, so remove one year and add another year to Buhari administration.
“As far as we are concern, we need to learn how to leave with COVID-19, I really want to congratulate those that achieve that feat, we were to inaugurate first week in January.
“We had to stop those doing minor completion because of the rise in COVID-19 transmission.
“The timeline for inauguration will depend on COVID-19 and if COVID-19 stops today or reduces we will commission the project.”
The minister further said the train services on all route might stop if passengers do not adhere to Covid-19 protocol.
“We will allow the train to run but if we see that we are conveying passengers who have COVID-19 from Lagos to Ibadan, we will stop it, just like we are threatening to stop Kaduna-Abuja if people don’t comply with the COVID-19 Protocol,” he said.
He said Abuja-Kaduna route convey about 4,000 passengers daily, stating that if anyone transmits COVID-19 on board, it will be a serious challenge.
