ISSUES WITH THE ABUJA METRO

The Abuja Metro is another indication that we as a people are hardly circumspect in our thinking and planning. The billions of Nigeria’s dwindling resources put into the metro had gone to waste and yet again we have abandoned it just like we abandoned most of our national facilities.

For a nation to grow we must have a culture of maintenance and this shows that Nigeria lacks any. Just look at any government building and you will get the drift. The Abuja Metro station has been looted largely and now it’s a shadow of itself and you wonder: where is all the money? The execution of the rail line was doomed to fail in the first place as it was only a straight route from Idu Station to the Airport and after disembarking at Idu you still need to connect to other parts of Abuja using vehicular transportation. The other sections of the project linking areas with people traffic are still yet to get off the ground, a mismanaged resource. The practicality was in jeopardy already. People just preferred using taxis as it was better and they could get a taxi at any time rather than waiting specifically for the train that had its own time. For the workability of the station government should have made provision for a branching network to other parts of the city and ensure easy connections to be made.

The rail should have started from the areas where people live like Kubwa and the likes, rather than the central business district. This is a reflection of the poor planning yet the government took loans of about 900m Dollars that it would have to repay.

The Abuja Metro is another colossal failure and it is indicative of the impetuous thinking that dominates governance in Nigeria. One wonders if another cost-benefit analysis was taken into cognizance and if there were any forms of scenario planning employed in our interventions.

The authorities have promised to resurrect the Abuja Metro. We are waiting.

Rufai Oseni, rufaioseni@gmail.com