Railway Is Nigeria’s Cheapest And Safest Transport Mode– Alli

Niyi Alli is the Director, Operation, Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC). In this special interview with MMS Plus he reveals NRC’s projections for the year 2018 while identifying  the Corporation’s major challenges in its bid to contribute to the development of the transport sector in Nigeria in recent times.

Excerpts:

How far have you gone with infrastructure revolution towards revitalizing the railway transport system in Nigeria?

There is a government policy towards building new railways and it is going to be standard gauge. The first phase is the Abuja-Kaduna commissioned by the President in 2016 and that one has been operating since then and in January this year, we also increased the capacity of that line with new coaches and locomotives that are up and on. It is a very successful railway.

The next phase which is the Lagos- Ibadan segment of Lagos-Kano line that has commenced; this particular line would be connected to the Apapa port. It is planned that it would be commissioned by the President by December this year or early January next year so that it could enhance the transportation network in the South West.

Having said that, the Itakpe-Warri line too which has been under construction for the past 28 to 30 years would also be completed before the end of the year. So we would start running standard gauge between Itakpe and Warri. Also, there is the Ibadan – Kaduna which has been approved by the federal Executive Council (FEC). It is believed that the financing of that particular line would be sorted out soon so that construction work could commence.

Similarly, the Lagos- Calabar line which is commonly called the coastal line is also in progress. So, from all these you can see that the current administration is totally committed to improving the railway network in the country to ease the movement of goods and people.

How were you able to manage the washout challenge you had last year around Ilorin?

That was on the narrow gauge and it was resolved almost immediately. As we speak today, there are services running between Lagos and Kano. There would always be problems on an old line like that and remember this line was built by the colonial masters but we are taking measures to ensure consistency  and reliability of the line and it would be number one on our agenda.

There seems to be shortage of capacity in terms of meeting customers’ demands, how you intend to resolve this?

That is the fact and the truth of the matter is that when demand outstretches supply, there would always be problems. What we have been able to demonstrate in the last two years is that there is market and Nigerians are willing to move both people and goods by rail. We don’t have the capacity to meet the demand at the moment and there is need to increase the number of coaches, wagons and locomotives that we have and the Federal Government is working assiduously on that, also the government is making funds available to ensure that we increase the capacity that we have.

Are you thinking of Public Private Partnership (PPP), in this regard?

We are not just thinking we are already actualizing; I am sure you are aware of the ongoing concession of the narrow gauge to General Electric consortium and discussions are ongoing as we speak. The advert has gone out and the process had commenced and the preferred bidder had emerged.

But the fear of job loss that usually follow concession and also the possibility of monopoly have been expressed in some quarters, how do you prevent such anomalies?

I don’t think there is anything like monopoly. What we need to realize that when you are concessioning a very big infrastructure and asset like the railway there is quite a number of very detailed discussion and negotiations that should go on to get the best deal for Nigerians. It’s not a case of monopoly, it is about who is ready to invest in the railway, as we all know, railway is highly capital intensive. There is no fear about monopoly, what we need to do is to take our time and learn from the failed concession and failed privatization deals in Nigeria and ensure that all those lessons are incorporated into what we are doing now.

We are not going to rush the process, because there is no point rushing and failing. We will be very careful and ensure that we do the right things. As we speak, the preferred bidder has emerged, discussions are ongoing; it might take a while because concession of major infrastructure like railway is not going to happen overnight.

Aside the new shuttle innovation between Apapa and Ebute Metta Juction (EBJ) station, are there other areas the railway has contributed to the development of transport sector in recent times, especially in 2017?

I don’t think it is correct to view it from that angle. The railway is continuously contributing. When the issues with congestion came up, on our initiative we decided to set up shuttle services, there are two depots here in EBJ where we keep goods brought out of the ports so that trucks wouldn’t have to line up all the way to Apapa. At the same time, we also have about four to five other depots; one is established at Ijoku, one at Abeokuta, one at Omi Adio and we are on the verge of establishing another one. This is just a short term measure to bring things out of the ports. What we are trying to avoid the inconvenience of all trucks going into Apapa.

We all witnessed in January when Mr. President commissioned the first Inland Dry Port in Kaduna which is connected by railway as well. So that is part of the services we are providing. We also offer freight services; we move flours, fertilizers and other products all over the country, we have major customers. Again, what you need to realize is that we have increased our market share over road but we need massive infrastructural funding to further increase our capacity so that we can increase our share of the market. Our problem now is that we have got more customers than we can deal with. More and more people have realized the advantages of moving by rail and currently, it is difficult to meet their needs because we haven’t got the capacity, however, the government is looking into that.

With all these initiatives I talked about, you can see the government is spending a lot of money and time to improving the railway infrastructure but it will not happen overnight. It’s just like building a road; you know you don’t build a road within two days. All the benefits will come over a period of time.

You alleged during the last port stakeholders meeting hosted by Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) that the terminal operators were not cooperating, which necessitated a decision of having a Standard Operations Procedure (SOP). Can you shed more light on that?

I don’t think people understood what I meant at the meeting. I didn’t say they were not cooperating and I don’t like using such kind of words. What I was saying was that there is a need to improve on efficiencies because if it is takes four hours to load the train, then obviously we are not getting the benefits of that. All agencies involved in evacuating cargoes from the ports should work together and come up with a service level agreement that will ensure that the railway transport system is efficient and that is what we are doing now.

Why should only one train be coming out of Apapa everyday when six should be coming out? We must sit down and work together to ensure that all the modalities are put in place to ease the burden on the port access roads and reduce the traffic congestion at port locations. We must seek to increase the volume of traffic by rail. A train cannot come in and be there for a whole day that is inefficiency. If you have one hundred trains and you can only bring out one in a day. It doesn’t make sense. We must seriously work on that. We are talking about having six or seven trains coming out of Apapa port every day.

Your passengers at Abuja-Kaduna stations complained of a hike in their transport fare, what are you doing to ensure that people of the low class in our society can also enjoy the benefits of railway transport?

I am not also comfortable with the use of the word “hike”, I don’t agree with that; rail is still the cheapest means of transport in Abuja-Kaduna. What we had initially was an introductory fare but you cannot continue to consistently run a loss. What we are looking at is the value for money as an alternative means of transportation. It is not about creating class or not, people still have a choice of either going by road or rail but I can assure you that the rail is still cheaper than going by road.

We need to at least curb our operating cost, we need to sustain the service and ensure that it is always available. Anywhere in the world, rail is always cheaper and that is the model we are trying to put in place. The beauty about our service at that station is that it is cheaper, safer, punctual and convenient. To sustain that efficiency, we need to ensure that finance is in place.

 What are your projections for 2018?

Like I said to you, in 2018, we want to start running trains to Ibadan, Itakpe-Warri on standard gauge line. Latest by January 2019 and that is what we are focusing on. We want to ensure that we get railways across the country. These are things that never happened before. We are also looking at ensuring that the decongestion of the ports continues. We will also ensure that our services on the narrow gauge are improved and maintained.

The 40 tank wagons purchased in 2012 have not been put into optimal use, how are talks with oil marketers?

Discussions are still ongoing. It is a kind of difficult situation. Moving petroleum products is not as straight forward as moving all other cargoes because of its volatile and inflammable nature. So, what it involves is loading and offloading and that is where we are having serious challenges with our potential customers but we have quite advanced with talks with a number of customers. For instance, if we have to move Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), we are going to load it from tank farms and offload it at another tank farm. So those two tank farms have to be developed and maintained with adequate integrity to ensure that they can then be used. The problem is those infrastructures have to be built by a third party which is the customers. We are providing land because railway land is available. It is a matter of time before that happens. There is whole lot of initiatives on ground. To me, moving our own products up and down demonstrates that the railway is back and we have to be trusted.

I am optimistic that this year we will sign agreements with some major marketers and you will start seeing a whole lot of petroleum products being moved via the rail.

What are you doing in the area of technology transfer?

I am sure you are aware that the Transport Minister, Rt. Hon Rotimi Amaechi has said we are going to have a transport university in Nigeria. It is a project the minister is pursuing vigorously and that will address most of those issues you are talking about but then with every contract that is signed or infrastructure development that is going on, we always include an amount of local content that has to be involved and we ensure that some of our engineers are being trained. So for us, it is going to get to a point soon where we will not rely on complete technology from foreigners. We are encouraging Nigerians to be trained fully in the railway sector. The railway sector in Nigeria used to be the largest employer of labour historically and the plan is to go back to that level of man power and I think the plan is going into fruition and progress.