By TheDispatch
One of the factors that has contributed to Nigeria’s economic woes and underdevelopment is the misplaced priorities of those in position of power and authority.
When in July 2018, Muhammadu Buhari, the president of Nigeria at the time, boarded a gleaming new train linking the capital city, Abuja, with its airport, he hailed the system as evidence that his government was working and delivering on its promises.
However, the project which was aimed to reduce congestion, helping the city avoid the polluted, traffic-clogged fate of the country’s commercial hub, Lagos—the capital until Abuja, a city newly carved out of the savannah in central Nigeria, opened for business in 1991, has been dashed.
Today, train cars are locked away at a depot.
The cavernous stations fully equipped with escalators, ticket offices, cameras and scanners are empty, overseen by bored security guards.
The faux leather couches in the VIP area are covered in bird and bat droppings, indicating as usual the Nigerian curse that the project has been abandoned.
This is $823 million Abuja Light Rail project —the first of its kind in West Africa.
It was closed in March 2020 to curb the spread of the coronavirus and since then, it has remained shuttered, and there’s been scant progress toward a resumption of service on the 27-kilometer (17-mile) line.
Of very disturbing is the fact that Nigeria is spending $50 million a year paying down the project’s $500 million in loans from the Export-Import Bank of China.
For five years now, it can be concluded that Nigeria has wasted $250 million to pay back debt of an abandoned project.
Efforts to reach the new Minister of the FCT proved abortive at the time of filing this report.
...additional report from Bloomberg