Follow Financial Times journalists as they set out
on a journey from Lagos to Kano by train... Standing on the train platform
in Lagos with a tiny pink ticket in her hand,
Cyrina Kazeem, a 63-year-old
grandmother, felt like a wide-eyed child again. More than 50 years ago, before
Nigeria's railway network had fallen into disrepair, her father treated her to
a train journey every Christmas.
Now she was preparing for her
first rail trip in decades – a 1,126-kilometre journey across the most populous
country in Africa, from the commercial capital Lagos in the south to Kano, the
main city in the north.
"My son's wife in Kano has
just had a baby and I need to go there," she said. "When I heard the
train was running again I thought I have to try it. Even if takes 30
hours."
Mrs Kazeem is not the only one
who is excited. Since it reopened in December the twice-weekly route linking
the country’s two largest cities has been nearly fully-booked, with passengers
attracted by the low prices – at $12, a second-class ticket is less than half
the cost of the cheapest bus fare – and the relative comforts and safety of
long-distance rail travel.
The resumption of the service
is the first achievement of a multibillion-dollar effort to revive Nigeria's
railways, whose decline had come to symbolise the rot in the country's
infrastructure. With Chinese contractors leading the way, the colonial-era
network is being rehabilitated and new lines built. "Our railways have
been comatose for some time," said Niyi Alli, the director of operations
at the Nigerian Railway Corporation. "This is the beginning of their
re-emergence."
Yet in an age of high-speed
rail, where travel at over 200km/h is normal, the train to Kano chugs along at
50km/h. That this is celebrated as progress in Nigeria illustrates not only the
state of the railways, but also the difficulty in effecting real reform in the
opaque, state-run sectors of the economy.
Completed under British rule
100 years ago, the Lagos-Kano route helped develop Nigeria's agricultural and
mineral economy. But the service declined soon after independence due to
mismanagement and government neglect. By the time it was shut in 2009, the
number of annual passenger rail trips in Nigeria had fallen to 1.3m, down from
11.3m in 1963. The drop in goods moved was even steeper, from 3m tonnes to
52,000 tonnes. In the continent’s second-biggest economy, growing consistently
at more than 6 per cent a year, rail transport was effectively dead.
Resurrection of the Lagos-Kano
service took nearly three years instead of the planned 10 months, with China
Civil Engineering Construction Corporation and Costain West Africa, a local
company, splitting the $153m government contract.
Even given the train's slow
speed – a function of the curves, gradient and nature of the narrow gauge track
– a reliable freight service would boost the economy. The roads have become
congested and degraded, with transport costs, times and the accident rate all
increasing over time. In 2007, the World Bank estimated that fixing the
existing narrow gauge lines could cause rail freight to jump to 4.2m tonnes
within four years, with passengers numbers rising to 10m.
Northern Nigeria, home to half
the population and a struggling economy, would especially benefit, since
everything from petrol to food comes by road from the southern ports. The
region's produce – such as skins and hides for export – goes back the same way
in containers.
Bashir Borodo, a Kano
businessman and former president of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria,
said the resumption of rail freight had already had a 'dramatic' effect.
"Rates for moving commercial goods on the train are much cheaper than by
road. It's a saving grace for the northern economy."
At the rundown Iddo station in
Lagos, the starting point of the journey, little appears to have changed since
independence. A handwritten fare list is tacked to the noticeboard, ticketing
is manual, and the plant pots have the date '1956' painted on them.
But the trains reflect the new
world economic order. When Mrs Kazeem was a child, the equipment was British.
The sleeper carriage she boarded shortly before the 12 noon departure from
Lagos earlier this month was made in China, and the locomotive in Brazil.
During her trip, the sweltering
second-class carriage was packed with families, with some forced to sit in the
aisle. With no running water on the train, the toilet facilities were soon a
mess. Further back in the train. passengers in the air-conditioned first class
section, who included four policemen on board to guard the train, watched a
Nigerian film.
By late afternoon, kitchen
workers in the restaurant car were stirring semolina fufu in a large pot. Music
flowed from the bar, where Emmanuel Okewu, a 21-year-old shoemaker, had a Turbo
King beer in one hand and a bottle of gin in the other.
"This is so much better
than the bus," he said.
Mrs Kazeem paid $31 for a berth
in a first-class sleeper cabin, which had two beds, air-conditioning and
private toilet with a jerrycan of water to wash. She was sharing it with another
woman she met on the train. They agreed Mrs Kazeem would take the top berth.
After putting on a pair of black tights for modesty, she tried and failed to
climb up, and instead slept on the chair.
When Mrs Kazeem woke in the
morning, the train stopped due to a fault in its brake system.
"This trip has been an
interesting experience – in a negative way," said Dada Thomas, a doctor,
sitting beside the track. "Externally the train looked very good. But you
have to have people who are qualified running the operations."
That has long been the
complaint. The state-owned Nigerian Railway Corporation has run at a loss since
the 1960s. Experts from India, Romania, Canada, China, Italy, the UK and the US
have been hired to help revitalise the train service, with no lasting success.
Privatisation plans have never been realised.
"We have had everyone here
– and now it's the Chinese," said Rowland Ataguba, a transport consultant
in the capital Abuja. "The only people who have benefited are consultants
like me, contractors and their political friends."
But this time the government
insists the efforts to revive the railways are genuine. The Port
Harcourt-Maiduguri line is also being fixed by Turkish, Chinese and local
contractors. Meanwhile, China's CCECC is building a new, two-way, standard
gauge line from Lagos to Kano, that will allow trains to move at more than
120km/h.
For passengers on the stranded
train, any speed would have been welcome. By 7.30am on Saturday, some people
had left to continue their journey by bus. At 8am a new locomotive was coupled
to the front of the train. "In Jesus' name, we are going!" said N
Jiya, the driver. Within a few hours, the train had passed into the mostly
Muslim north of Nigeria.
Mariam Moussa, a 53-year-old
trader from Kano, had boarded a train to Lagos for the first time in her life
two weeks previously to buy cloth, shoes and handbags to resell. On her return
trip, she paid $12 to put her stock in the freight car, about half what it
would have cost to transport it by road. "The train is cheaper and much
safer than the bus. It’s a very positive service for poor people," she
said.
As night fell, Kano was still
many hours away. Mrs Kazeem dozed off. At 3am, 39 hours after leaving Lagos,
the train shuddered to a halt for the final time. Mrs Kazeem stood at the
window of her cabin, smiling, in no rush to get off.
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