$5.8bn rail project: Igbo leaders accuse FG of political victimisation
More and more Igbo leaders at the weekend continued to express their angst and disbelief over the recent revelation by Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe that the ’coastal’ rail project of the Federal Government, which will be financed from a $5.8 billion loan from the China Exim Bank, will not pass through the heart of the South East geopolitical zone.President Muhammadu Buhari had in April sought the approval of the National Assembly for the Federal Government to secure a loan from the China EXIM Bank for the modernization of the Lagos-Kano rail projects, which has Lagos-Ibadan segment $1.231 billion; Kano- Kaduna segment $1.146 billion and coastal railway project, the Lagos-Calabar segment, $3.474 billion.Worried by the revelation, former governor of Anambra State, Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeife said the statement by the Federal Ministry of Transport clearly shows that the South East was cleverly excluded from the project what the Ministry referred to as “siding” or “branch line” that will touch Onitsha and Aba was an afterthought.He said that the rail project should run its original course while any side lines or branch lines can go to anywhere. He also tasked the Ministry to make public the map of the coastal rail project, so that people can see whether is passed through the core South East or not.“The statement repeated what Senator Gbenga Ashafa at the floor of the senate and that does not make any difference. What is important now is for Amaechi to explain why the original master plan which captured the South-East very well was dropped and the coastal rail line adopted.” Chairman, Board of Trustees of the Nigerian Importers Association, Chief Gilbert Obi, described the exclusion of the South East as a clear political arrangement aimed at victimizing the zone.The Administrative Secretary, Ndigbo Lagos, Barr. Ireke Abgeze Kalu Onuma warned the Federal Government to stop playing politics with the infrastructural development of the country, saying the South East is an important economic segment of Nigeria which cannot be so secretly yanked off the railway development plan. “Doing that and suddenly saying that there will be a siding point or a branch line that will get to the South East, is to say the least uncharitable to the zone.“I support Senator Abaribe’s effort. I also support the Nigerian Senate that the loan should not be approved until the federal government reverts to the original master plan”. Also, the Igbo socio-political organisation, Igboekulie lauded the senate’s “suspension of the inglorious decision of the FGN to, once again, try to strangulate the South East zone economically,” urging the Federal Government to revert to the “original professionally designed first Integrated Master plan for Transportation in Nigeria, designed by Albert Speer and Partner, a German firm which effectively captured the South East zone, traversing Abia, Imo, Anambra, Enugu states.”The group in a statement by its Media and Publicity Committee further said that it is not on record that the administration of President Buhari has designed another railway plan after the president had vowed to implement the railway development master plan which was approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) under former President Olusegun Obasanjo.Meanwhile, the Federal Ministry of Transportation in a statement on Friday by its Director of Press, Mrs. Yetunde Sonaike, explained that the two major rail projects of the Federal Government are the coastal rail project which is from Lagos to Calabar traversing Lagos-Ore-Benin City- Sapele-Warri-Yenegoa with sidings to Otuoke, Port Harcourt, Aba, Uyo, Calabar and branch line from Benin City, Abudu, Onitsha including Onitsha rail bridge.
