The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, has said the country needs about 36 to 40 billion dollars to connect the whole country through the state capital with rail.
Amaechi, who disclosed this in Abuja on Friday in an interview said they are doing so much with little, so that what happened in other countries won’t happen here because the country will pay back the loan.
“We have had debt forgiveness before but that is not the aim, our aim is to be able to pay back and to pay back there are so many things we can do.
“We are constructing new seaports in Lekki, Bonny via Portharcourt, money from there we expect that it should go to the national till from which we can also pay back from,” he said.
He also assured Nigerians that the main idea behind the construction of the rail line from Kano to Maradin, in Niger Republic was purely economic rather than political.
Amaechi explained that the decision to invest in Kano-Maradin rail line is purely economic, no politics, people are the ones politicising it. I made that decision because there is a competition between the coastal States of Nigeria, Benin Republic, Togo and Ghana.
He said Nigerians should talk more on the employment opportunities the project would generate as well as imports and exports activities that will open up for Nigeria through the neighbouring countries.
According to him, the other three countries are able to move cargoes from this landlocked countries to their seaports for either exports or imports, they are able to do those businesses but we are not able to do them because the landlocked countries are complaining of crimes, the road are not safe in Nigeria, there is Custom interference, Police checkpoints here and there.
“Therefore, they find it difficult to do business in Nigerian seaports. So to be able to attract those cargoes, we decided to construct a rail line from Kano-Maradin, just Maradin, is a village in Niger Republic and we will also build warehouses there to be able to attract cargoes from neighbouring countries and transport it effectively to Tin-Can or Apapa seaport for movement onward or outside the country.
“Or make them import through our seaports and we drop it off at Maradin where they can use there cargoes. Nobody has talked about the employment this investment will generate, nobody has talked about the economic benefits that we would raise funds for the country and that the economic interest is by far outweigh the current investment.”
“If we don’t mismanage our crude oil investment, we should also be able to pay back from there but what is critical is the cost of building this infrastructure now because it will not be the same in the near future if we don’t build now,” he said.
