Friday, July 27, 2018 will remain ever green in the memory of those who witnessed history in Warri, Delta State. It was the first time that train got to the ancient oil-rich city. The historic event threw residents into wild jubilation.
That the train arrived well after 9pm meant nothing to residents, who trooped out en masse, drumming and singing the praises of President Muhammadu Buhari for the actualisation of a 35-year-old dream.
Transportation Minister Rotimi Amaechi, who insisted the train must get to Warri before its detour to Agbor was excited when the train made the journey.
Change is Here
“This is the change. We love what is happening under this administration and we will forever be grateful to President Muhammed Buhari for making it happen in our lifetime,” one of the youth leaders Ibim Matthew, summarised the emotional outpourings of the people.
Matthew’s expression spoke volume of how much the people had longed for the connection by rail. Until last Friday, it had been wait that lasted for 35 years.
Youths, teenagers and women climbed the steps and hung onto the coaches to take selfie photographs in turns. It was an electrifying moment when residents forgot all hostilities against the government to celebrate the new lease of possibilities opened before them.
It was the trial run of the 320-kilometre Itakpe-Ajaokuta-Warri standard gauge rail track. It was also the first time the Federal Government will be traversing the entire stretch of the line from Itakpe, a nine-hour trip, which the Nigerian railway Corporation (NRC) management disclosed could further be reduced by half when full operation kick-off on the line.
When the idea was mooted 35 years ago, the line was to be the first in Africa and one of the leading few across the world. There was a plan to dedicate the line for the, exclusive use of Ajaokuta, a steel city emerging from Kogi, then, a province within the old Kwara State. It was to freight iron ore from Itakpe, a city sitting on a resource which metric tonnage projected to last some centuries. There were also dolomite, limestone and several other mineral deposits along the belt, besides the abundance of agro produce within the zone.
Long Neglect
Conceived and inaugurated in 1983, as an industrial line, the Itakpe-Ajaokuta-Warri line, until lately, remained a white elephant project.
As an industrial line, it was a critical element in the nation’s march to industrialisation, as it was meant to freight iron ore from Itakpe and Dolomite from Jakura to Ajaokuta Steel complex and to take liquid steel from Ajaokuta to service Aladja Steel Company. The line was also to take other finished materials to the sea port of Warri, from where other foreign components of the nation’s steel ambition would be brought in.
From Itakpe, the government has constructed a siding into Ajaokuta Steels Complex, and same was said to have been constructed from Warri to link Aladja Steels. A siding is a branch line from the major trunk of a rail line and used to connect vital areas of economic importance for the purpose of movement of goods and services by rail.
Through tunnels and bridges, over the mountainous ridges of the Sahel region, much of which had to be blasted, through to the wetlands of the Delta the rail lines had been built by Julius Berger for decades. But, the project was abandoned by successive governments. Every administration in the last three decades had paid lip service to the development of the critical sector of the nation’s economy.
The Prospect
The abandoned rail lines have cost the nation more. It has stunted its growth as one of the world’s producer of steel, which arguably, is the bedrock of industrial revolution world over. The 70-kilometre stretch steel city called Ajaokuta laid prostate. It has been unable to come on stream for lack of a viable route to move its raw materials and finished products from the ports and off its furnaces.
Indeed, the lack of access had kept the mill on its knees for too long, Babatunde Suru, an engineer, said.
Suru, the General Manager, Engineering Works & Services Department at Ajaokuta Steels Company, said that though all the raw materials needed to produce at the complex were between 60 and 80 kilometres with the farthest being the Warri Port (about 150 kilometres away), the steel complex has remained grounded because of rail line.
Suru said: “We, at Ajaokuta have been eagerly awaiting the takeoff of this rail line. We are eager because we are dealing with a product that cannot be moved by road and have been rendered helpless because the rail lines have for a long time refused to see the light of the day.”
He said the line, conceived 35 years ago and dedicated as industrial lane to service the mining belt of Itakpe, Ajaokuta, Warri and Aladja, will swing into action once the NRC is satisfied and certify the line stable enough and ready for use.
Suru said: “At Ajaokuta, we have 43 kilns and furnaces and work is completed on 40 of them. We however cannot fire any of our kilns because once we set it off. We must at any point in time have a seven month stock of materials in place, and electricity must not go off even for a second once the kilns have been set off because we are dealing in highly sensitive chemical compounds that must always remain molten.
“Once we begin operation, we are only permitted to switch off our machines once in seven years. So you see that it is a very sensitive sector and we must be very sure everything is in place before we switch on our process.”
Appraising the level of readiness of the Ajaokuta complex to takeoff, Suru said: “Without sounding superfluous, we are about 95 per cent ready to commence operation and we can say that the only component delaying us is this rail connection, which is the essential part of our operations. Without it, we cannot even fire our operations and begin because we cannot start and stop.
“The nature of the chemicals we are dealing with requires constant melting. Electricity must not go off, that is why we have two electricity lines dedicated to Ajaokuta apart from the IPP and other alternate means of electricity generation.”
The Federal Government plans to maximize the the line by introducing a passenger train on it. But, Suru doubted its possibility because the single line status of the facility.
He said: “Before we begin our operations, we must have at least seven months of stock in our warehouse, which means the line would be very active day and night, shuttling Itakpe, Jakura, Warri and other places to pick our raw materials.
“When we finally commences, we would also need to take our products to the ports and such other places by the rail. So, mining activities alone are enough to occupy the route productively.”
According to Suru, Ajaokuta alone can produce 1.5 million metric tons of liquid steels within a year and by the end of the second year of operation, it could go into the second phase of its operation which is the production of flat sheets.
Suru described the second phase as the needed bedrock for the nation’s industrial revolution.
Citing the nation’s capacity to deliver, he said: “If Japan, without any solid mineral resource, can be the second biggest producer of steel and iron materials in the world, Nigeria, which have huge resources of these materials within a cluster of belt could surpass such record and be among the world biggest player within a very short time.”
He added that the Ministry of Mines & Steel Development has shown determination to drive the process and succeed on the project.
Human Element
Notwithstanding Suru’s ecstasy on the viability of the line, the minister, vide an addendum in 2015, altered the exclusivity of the line by adding passenger element.
In the new arrangement, 12 new stations were proposed between Itakpe and Warri, with two cited between Itakpe and Ajaokuta and the remaining 10 stretching between Ajaokuta and Warri.
The stations are Itakpe, Eganiy, Adoke and Ajaokuta Itogbo, Agenebode and Uromi Stations, all of which have been contracted to the Chinese Civil Engineering Construction Company (CCECC), for which only the soil test and compacting have been done.
Appreciable work has been done on the remaining stations of Egehen, Igbanke, Agbor, Abraka, Okpara and Ujewu, handed over to Messrs Julius Berger (the original contractor) to complete. The Agbor Station, sitting on a 50-hectare of land and meant to be the marshalling yard for operations along the route gradually emerging as a railway city.
Agbor will have staff quarters, maintenance yard, signaling and communications headquarters, and administrative office of the Ajaokuta-Warri line.
Apart from Agbor, where office structures have been put in place and more springing up, no other station has taken off.
Miffed by the development, Amaechi queried Messrs. CCECC and ZTE for the slow pace of work.
The project was segmented between Julius Berger, CCECC and ZTE.
Speaking with reporters moment after the inspection at Agbor, the Transport minister said that though he was happy that the jinx of the Ajaokuta-Warri line has been broken and that he and his team could move on the track after 35 years, he expressed displeasure with the pace of work, which according to him, was unacceptable to the government.
Amaechi said: “During one of our meetings, we have agreed that this project should be completed in June and to be inaugurated by President Buhari in August. But, it is very clear that this is not feasible as not a single station is up out of 12 stations.
“The conclusion is that we would need to give them more time and this means that I cannot really determine as of now whether Mr. President can still commission this project before the end of the year. But, that would not stop activity on this line.
“We have been able to establish that we can indeed move from Itakpe in Kogi State to Warri in Delta State. This means that we can commence passenger traffic on the lane. The NRC would make temporary arrangements for the selling of tickets and our people should be able to move from Warri to Itakpe, which we proposed would be a big station with transit park for vehicles so that passengers could board Abuja buses from the station.”
He said efforts will be made to connect Itakpe to Lokoja, the Kogi State capital, in line with the mandate of the government to connect all state capitals with railway from where it could be extended to Abuja the FC.
“I came in this morning through Lokoja and I have seen that it is indeed possible to connect Itakpe with Lokoja and thereafter to Abuja. In the interim, our people can move from Warri to Itakpe from where they could move to Abuja or Lokoja by road, pending the rail project,” Amaech said.
Responding to the minister’s queries on the location of some of the stations being sand filled, Chiedu Nwazojie said these were unavoidable eventualities because the stations were late additions to the project’s spectrum.
Nwazojie, an engineering consultant for the rail project, said: “The original concept of this project was to just build few stations at Itakpe, Ajaokuta and Warri, being an industrial line. That had to be changed only in 2015, long after the right of way had been established and the lines constructed.
“The only option left to us as designers and the contractor, is to follow the alignment and adhere strictly to international best practices which puts stations in at least 30-kilometre of each other and depending on the services to which we intended and envisaged each station would be deployed, design just a transit station or a bigger station with multi choice alternatives to passengers.”
Nwazojie praised the Buhari administration for his commitment to the project, which he said will transform the nation industrially when fully on stream.
“Though an important element which is passenger traffic has been added to the bouquet of services to be added to this line, it must be restated that its coming on stream would be a major boost to the industrialisation efforts of the nation as the major reason why the line was conceived which was the Ajaokuta Steel complex would be reactivated.”
The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) Managing Director Fidet Okhiria said the corporation in line with the ministerial directive, continues to test run the line throughout August, while commercial passenger traffic would begin by September.
Okhiria said: “We have acquired five of these coaches and dedicated them to this line. We have placed order for some locomotives and wagons and when they arrive they would also be deployed to this line. So, we would no longer stop activity on this line. We will continue to run by making temporary provision for ancillary services pending the completion of the stations.”
He said he and his management team would go back to the drawing board and come up with a working template for the route.
Okhiria lauded the Federal Government for giving quality attention to the rail sector of the economy, saying: “This is the best era for the NRC, where the government is determined to extend railway coverage to all state capitals in the country, and we are determined to continue to excel and take the railway to the zenith of its operation.”
Like Okhiria, many Nigerians believe this may yet be the best time for the nation’s rail sector.
“One can only hope that this tempo is sustained and many areas are covered by the rail,” Michael an Iviare resident in Agenebode area, told The Nation.
Indeed, many communities across the state, and in all nooks and crannies, will want to share in the ecstatic celebrations that went through the Warri last Friday. Strange as it may seem, they could hardly wait to have the life changing encounter.