A team of railway construction experts from the United States of America is presently in Nigeria, the newspaper This Day reports. Their mandate is “to work out modalities that would assist the country to rehabilitate existing railway lines across the country, rather than embark on new construction.

“Checks revealed that the development would among others, go a long way in helping the Federal Government to reposition the railway system and reduce carnage on the roads. The team, led by Mr Jim Blaze, as part of efforts to appraise viability of the North Central Zone, started the evaluation from Lagos and visited Oyo and Ogun states. Addressing newsmen after the tour of Ilorin terminus, Blaze said their mission in Nigeria was to determine and estimate the materials needed to make the Nigerian railway system work again. A report of the assessment he said would be presented to the new managing director of the Nigeria Railway Corporation.”

Blaze was quoted saying: “the managing director is expected to have some serious discussions with your political leaders on what should be done. Your government will determine how fast we will move.”

According to the paper, “he also said the team appraisal of the rail system had so far shown that there are no supporting structures, a prerequisite for a safe rail system, adding that how far the project would go would be determined by the Nigerian government. Blaze said though the rails and tiles [sleepers] in the first 20 to 28 kilometres from Lagos to Abeokuta will be replaced completely because they are ‘old, fatigued and fractured,’ the entire rehabilitation would ‘not be expensive to complete.’ Although he refused to mention the cost of the rehabilitation, he said, ‘I am not sure I want to tell you, because even a normal engineering contract could have a 30 to 40% contingency fee, so the number I have in my head should really not be made public, because it might raise false expectations, but we are not talking about billions of dollars’”.

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