On the commencement of the project

A vision, a dream moved from vision and dream to reality. Concrete has come out of the ground and project has taken off finally to the glory of God. In the fullness of time this would be completed and we would have the first efficient intra-city mass transit that this state is committed to and the state has wanted for a long time. A baby has indeed been born! What we need to do now is to nurture that baby gradually to adulthood. What are seeing are the pillars that would link the project to Iddo ultimately passing through the National Theatre and bringing it down here on its way to Okokomaiko. The timeline for the project – we expect that by 2012 the first seven kilometres would have been completed and the first five stations would also have been fully built. We are hoping that we can reach conclusion very quickly our concessionaires now and conclude on the terms of management and operation and the supply of coaches. There is still work to do but the important thing is that without funfare, without celebration this project has taken off.

On the impact of the rail project on Lagosians

It is going be multidimensional and most impactful project in the life of Lagosians. Even during the construction now, as we speak people here are working on Sunday. We already have 2000 people employed by this project; as we scale up next year another 1000 people would be employed during the next year’s construction phase. By the time the construction accelerates to its -peak, we expect to employ over 8000 people during the construction phase. Of course when it is finished you can only imagine the number of people that would be employed, running, managing, welding, digging and doing so many things. It will shorten the travel time in this axis by significant number of hours and it would make life much more pleasant and enjoyable.   And all of the stress you see now, long hours in traffic would ultimately disappear. But beyond that we still have six other rail corridors in Lagos that are on the drawing board. This success of this will immediately open up other rail corridor that goes to Agege,the one that goes to Lekki, the one that goes to Alimosho, the one that goes to Ikorodu, the one that goes to Epe. This is the most significant baby; the first one has been born. So the benefits can simply not be over-emphasised

On how the rail project would be powered

This project has been designed to supply its own electricity. We’ve thought of every problem that can arise in the delivery of this kind of project. Not only do we have many teams working in unison, in planning, in implementation, the consultant supervising working for government, we’ve spent two and a half years planning this project. The best consultant you would ever have in designing this project, we’ve found a team with experience who have done this in their own country to come and build this for us. What more could you ask! Life is all about challenges, we have planned for the worst and we are hoping for the best.