Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi has assured that the
federal government under President Muhammadu Buhari will ensure the
sustenance of the Abuja-Kaduna rail project upon completion.
.Briefing
news men after a brief inspection and test ride of the rail project on
Wednesday in Abuja, Amaechi said the project will be completed and
should be ready for use in July.
“Is it sustainable? The
answer is yes because it’s on its own. If you say whether it will be
subsidized, it will be. We are working out the details of how much it
will cost to carry passengers and to maintain it”, he said.
“We
are looking at bringing Mr. President to commission in July. In two
weeks time, they will do the test run of the track without passengers,
after that two weeks, it will take another two weeks to do test run with
passengers and it will be free of charge and that will take us to the
end of June. Which means by first week in July, we believe that the
President will come and flag it off for commercial service”, he said.
“At
the beginning we had done the test run but then it wasn’t completed.
Today it has been completed. So today is the first test run that we are
doing on the completed standard gauge. The signaling, communication,
stations are all completed now so you can actually technically say today
is the first day of test running the completed project”.
Amaechi
also said, his ministry would partner with the Nigeria Identity
Management Authourity to ensure smooth registration of passengers
without hitches.