Still on the Lagos light rail project
On Wednesday, October 7, during the visit of Alderman Alan Yarrow, the Mayor of London, to the ongoing Lagos Rail Mass Transit Project at the National Theatre station, the management of the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA) announced a new date of 2017 for the completion of the Blue line rail project. The 27.5km project (running from Okokomaiko to Marina on Lagos Island), with an estimated cost of $1.2 billion, was started in August 2009, and was meant to be completed in 36 months (August 2012). However, the project could not be completed on schedule and the completion date has severally been shifted to June 2013, 2014, 2015, and now 2017.
Responding to questions from journalists on reasons for the missed deadlines, erstwhile LAMATA managing director and now Lagos State commissioner for transport, Dayo Mobereola, attributed the delays to funding challenges and the challenge of engaging the right partners to drive the project. He said the state desperately needed private investor partners who could run the system for a period of 30 years and hoped the Mayor of London’s visit would open new vistas of opportunity and attract the right investors.
To put it mildly, we are surprised by the claim that the delays have been partly due to funding challenge. We recall vividly that on several occasions the former governor, Babatunde Fashola, while inspecting progress of work, had been reported as explicitly stating that the project was being funded by a loan from multilateral agencies. Specifically, on September 10, 2014, a press statement on the official website page of the Lagos State governor had quoted the former governor, while he inspected the progress of work at the Iganmu Terminus of the project, as saying that “the loans obtained by the administration are used in financing such capital-intensive projects as the Light rail, expansion of the Lagos-Badagry Expressway and Mile 12-Ikorodu, among others”.
In view of the foregoing, and given the conventional wisdom that rumours thrive in the absence of the right information, we believe it is time for the Lagos State government to come out clean on the true status of the project. Were loans obtained for the project? Or is the project being funded solely by the state government, with taxpayers’ money? What is truly delaying the completion that project? Genuine answers to these and more questions while help to dispel the general impression that the Lagos State government is not handling the rail project with the seriousness it deserves.
And while the project drags, Lagos, the most populous city in Africa with a population of over 20 million, continues to suffer severe and business-crippling gridlocks resulting in millions of lost man-hour. Sadly, the only system of mass transportation for such a hugely populous city is road transportation, which has proved to be inadequate. The situation was ameliorated by the various ad-hoc measures of the Fashola administration to cope with the bedlam until such a time when the comprehensive rail system captured on the Lagos Transportation Master Plan could come on stream. Of late, however, it appears all those initiatives are being undone and the crippling hold-ups have returned.
When completed, therefore, the Lagos light rail project is supposed to offer a comprehensive solution to the problem of mass transportation in Lagos. It is beyond our understanding how such a project with potentially huge positive demonstration effect on the economy is allowed to linger. Even if we go with the argument that the project enjoys no form of multilateral funding or loan, Lagos, with internally generated revenue of about N31 billion monthly, should be able to deliver the project on schedule if it had made it a priority. Ultimately, the delays in the completion of the Blue line (which is the first in a series of lines) may hurt the state’s chances of attracting the right kind of foreign investors to invest in the rail system.
Meanwhile, Addis Ababa, a city of only 4 million people, made history by becoming the first sub-Saharan African city to launch a 34km and 39-station electric tram rail system. Incidentally, its rail system, started in 2012, was completed in record time and cost a mere $475 million – a far cry from Lagos’ $1.2 billion 27.5km rail system.
Irrespective of any challenge on its way, therefore, we call on the Lagos State government to prioritise the completion of the light rail project – and timely, too.
As Mayor Yarrow rightly said during his visit, “I have spent 43 years in investment banking. I have very often seen stations like this but this is a long way from being finished. It is a very exciting story to have this in Lagos but it has to be funded because it will do Lagos a lot of good…. But the reality is that you need to start thinking progressively on how to fund it and you should start now, rather than later.”