The Federal Government has assured that the recent earth tremor that occurred along the at Ifo local government area of Ogun State will not disrupt the ongoing Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge railway project under construction.
Sabiu Zakari, permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Transportation (FMOT) who stated this during an inspection tour of the site where earth tremor occurred expressed satisfaction with the action taken by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), the contractor handling the project to prevent the earth tremor from obstructing or causing damage to the project.
According to the permanent secretary;, “I believe the work being done as assessed by our consultants and our engineers is what is supposed to be done. I’m satisfied. Remedial action is being taken on the area where earth tremor occurred. That is where gas line passes and there was a slide in the place”.
Responding to a question on whether work done to checkmate the earth tremor involved an extra monetary cost to the original contract value, transportation ministry chief said: There is no extra cost for now. He expressed confidence in the ability of civil engineering experts of the project in handling the natural occurence.
In his submission, “Well, that is part of the contingencies that are likely to come up in this type of engineering. What is being done is within the parameter of what is provided. What happens when you’re doing an engineering work like this is that there are places where you make savings on what you want to achieve. So these types of provisions that are made, one will take care of the other.”Zakari elaborated
The earth tremor did not cause any vissible damage to the project, but a reliable source disclosed that whenever it rained, the highland collapses and fills the railway corridor in that spot with sand.
With Ibrahim Alhassan chairman, Nigeria Railway Corporation as the leader of the inspection team, Zakari was not specific on when commercial activities will begin on the completed standard gauge railway project from Lagos-Ibadan, stressing that he did not want to commit himself because it is an engineering work.
“I don’t want to commit and say exactly this is the date that commercial activities will start because as you have seen rightly, it’s an engineering work. The very earth tremor you’re mentioning, was it anticipated? They are things that come up as you go along doing this work. You cannot exactly say or predict this thing can happen, the FMOT permanent secretary declared.
Fidet Okhiria, managing director of Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC), announced on the occasion that tracklaying of the remaining four kilometres to Ibadan from Lagos has been completed.
On the next line of action, he said: “We now want to concentrate on Lagos, and sooner than later we’ll start up operations from Iju to Ibadan. The two lines of the tracklaying from Lagos to Ibadan have been completed up to Ibadan end from Iju in Lagos’’.
Meanwhile, as at the time of filing this report, there is still a lot of job to be done on the standard guage rail project work from Iju to Apapa seaport which many described as a very critical corridor in the movement of passengers and freight.
