Abuja Light Rail, eleven years in the making yet not everything is on track
text by TJ Benson, writer and photographer, Abuja.
"Abuja smells of power," writes Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her critically acclaimed novel Americanah. When I first read that sentence, I couldn’t shake off the feeling of recognition. I had grown accustomed to this smell on the holiday rides with my father to his office in Maitama, a highbrow area, which, unknown to me then was and continues to be inaccessible by public transport.
People had always advised loved ones moving to Abuja from the villages and towns that life there was expensive. Malam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, once declared that ‘Abuja is not for poor people’. One of the many aspects of life that have always been expensive in Abuja, due to the limited options, is transport, the conveyer of all things. So I was most excited, as a young person in one of the satellite towns without a personal vehicle, to hear about the commencement of the Abuja Light Rail in 2007. The railway line was planned to stretch 290 kilometers, and cost the Nigerian government $824 million and would be built by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC). An additional $194 million would be provided by China’s Exim Bank for the supply of 48 coaches as well as maintenance for three years.
The first time I saw a moving train I nearly didn’t see it, one second it was there and the next its tail had vanished behind a row of incomplete buildings. It was 2011 and I was twenty. The metro system was something most middle class people of my generation had only encountered in textbooks and in the nostalgia of the generations before us, but there it was that evening in the city of Minna, this relic from my country’s past and I wondered what it would be like to ride it. Later I would learn that while the metro system had died off in the rest of the country, the National Railway Corporation still ran a line that ferried people from Kano through Kaduna, Minna to Ibadan, Abeokuta and Lagos. These were the same trains that had ferried people during the Civil War half a decade ago. Those who boarded it complained about the speed, the discomfort and the terrible hygiene. The train ride was meant to be an adventure but it had become a misfortune.
A couple of years later I would board the new metro connecting Kaduna to Abuja, constructed through a loan out of the benevolence of the CCECC. The upholstery and interior design mirrored that of an airplane. Indeed the stations were in better condition than some Nigerian airports and when the train pulled off the station, I felt I was in that carriage from years ago, from the metro that had disappeared behind a row of buildings.
The next time I got to the station, the vendor snarled at me, at all of us, for coming four hours to departure time. He yammered that all the tickets had been sold. We all wondered who had bought all the tickets. The answer came minutes to departure time when rich men and women unfolded themselves from their Range Rovers, Mercedes Benz and Rolls Royce. Assisted by their guards and aides who carried their luggage, they made straight for the waiting hall, that the rest of us didn’t have access to. I was confused. What were these men doing here? Didn’t they belong at the airport? Weren’t metro stations in the country for the poor? Yet there they were, sweeping past us in their agbadas and expensive fabric into the station to take shelter from the raw sun, their expensive perfumes lingering in their wake.
Abuja Light Rail is set to be the first of its kind in West Africa. It will run on diesel but has provisions to switch to electricity when the electrical power problems in the country are solved.
The obvious benefit of the Abuja Light Rail to everyday commuters is that they will be insulated from fluctuating cab prices (from fluctuations in oil prices) but the issue that remains unaddressed is accessibility.
There is skepticism around when will the rails connect the working class from their homes in Nyanya, Gwarinmpa, Kado and other satellite towns to working districts like Wuse, Garki and Maitama, that are currently only accessible by Uber or long treks. The skepticism is not unfounded, everything is ‘eventually’ in Nigeria. Eleven years has passed since the Abuja Light Rail development was announced. Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo announced the project in May 2007, in line with Abuja’s bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
There is also the question of who the rail is for. It would be handed over to the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) after inauguration and people fear that the mismanagement that happened to the Kaduna rail would happen here.
The route of the rail will run from the Abuja Metro Station to Idu and then to the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport. In fact plans are in place to have dedicated carriages that will carry air travellers straight to the airport. This means I would expect to see the sort of passengers who had breezed past us in Kaduna again. A feeling that is echoed by many Nigerians, that the light rail will service only the elite, a safe method of conveying them to the airport.
When I tried to attend the launch of the project on the day it launched, 12 July 2017, I was told that the launch was “Presidential”.
On his speech during the launch ceremony, Buhari was in celebratory mode.
“The completion of this very important project is a dream come true. This accomplishment clearly demonstrates our commitment to addressing critical infrastructural projects.”
The Abuja Light Rail is a ground breaking project for Nigeria but its true success will be measured in how it will navigate the relentless power supply problem that continues to plague the country, mismanagement and how it addresses the issue of accessibility.
