Apapa Rail Station Set To Be Demolished

Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has said the Apapa rail station would be demolished in order to ease the activities at the Apapa seaport.

The Minister disclosed this while inspecting facilities at the Apapa station.

He also directed the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) to terminate the lease and repossess the land.

He said the demolition is necessitated by the government desire to rebuild the station and expand the sea port.

“What do you expect from a company that has been there since 1950s? We have seen misuse of equipments here and poorly managed station and what we are doing is that we are rebuilding.

He said the expansion of the station towards the seaport would allow for easy access to ferry goods from the sea to the rail line and then to the town.

“The quality of work is going very well. Both the track laying and field work are going well. The problem is Lagos. We have a problem in Lagos, Apapa to be precise. Not because there is work done in Apapa but because we are going to relocate one of the stations in Apapa.

“The problem with Lagos is the relocation of gas and oil pipelines. We will try and award the contract for the water pipelines because they have not finished the technical work for the relocation of the gas and oil pipelines. This is slowing down the activities of work in Lagos,” he said.

The minister also commented on the progress of the work with the contractors.

“We believe that the task we have given them is going on well because the contract is in two phases. The first phase is the Ebute Meta to Ibadan and we believe that we should be able to complete that. The second phase is the Apapa sea port. If we are not able to complete that, we will start commercial activities from Ebute Meta to Ibadan, which is the original contract.

“It was this government that said all railways must terminate at seaports. For that one, if we finish on time, fine, if we don’t, we continue but work is progressing rapidly from Ebute Meta to Ibadan,” he said.