BUHARI COMMISSIONS ABUJA - KADUNA RAIL LINE. . . HURRAY!

I have written extensively on the potential for rail transportation, both on its own merit and the needed relief for the overburdened road network. Thank God for small mercies. The President Buhari administration has now thankfully completed an inland rail project conceived two administrations ago and commenced by the past one.

However, I am not one to heap praise on anyone for just doing his job. There is so much left to be done. In terms of modern planning, every single progress that can be achieved now by any Nigerian government can be deemed to be at least a quarter century belated. Why for example did the Obasanjo, Yar'Ada, Jonathan and finally the Buhari administration not find it worthwhile to put into service the Warri to Ajaokuta rail line that has been fully built ten years ago? We must be mad to have left that completed project go to waste. If we had our heads properly screwed on, we would have by now, 2016, completed the doubling of that standard gauge track and extended it to Lokoja and beyond to Abuja.

This new Abuja to Kaduna rail line being heralded would then remain what it actually is, a side show, a useful but overrated mass transit system. Who ever carries much of anything from Kaduna to Abuja?

To make matters worse, the government issued a statement a couple of months ago that the new Abuja to Kaduna rail line would be operated as a FREE service for sometime. There we go again. How long is "sometime"? The path to perdition is often paved with good (but stupid) intentions. The people a.k.a. masses of Nigeria never asked anyone for free services. How then did anyone come up with this strange idea? We are yet to recover from the self-inflicted injury of the fuel subsidy bazzar. I cannot recall the last time the federal government had a budget surplus.

The yet to be appointed minister of the FCT will find his or her effort to rid the streets of Abuja of beggars to be stumped by this free transport policy. We repeatably shoot ourselves in the foot, and later wonder aloud where the pain is coming from.