Substantial portions of the ongoing rehabilitation of rail track in the Eastern corridor from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri will be completed latest by December this year to enable trains to move from Port Harcourt to Gombe.
The assurance was given by the Minister of Transport, Senator Idris Umar, on Saturday while speaking with journalists at Inkil in Bauchi, shortly after inspecting the ongoing rehabilitation work.
“At the moment, we are rehabilitating and indeed we completed over 90 per cent of the rehabilitation exercise. We hope that by December this year, substantial portions of this particular important corridor from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri will be completed. The only portion that will probably be left will be from Bajoga to Buni Yadi up to Maiduguri. This is because of the obvious reason we all know; the security challenges around Maiduguri side.
“We have every assurances from the contractor and all the supervising engineers on site that by the end of November, latest by December this year, the train will start moving from Port Harcourt to Gombe and indeed beyond Gombe,” he said.
He commended the level of performance so far by the contractor handling the rehabilitation work, informing that the corridor had a total of 3,505 kilometres of narrow gage out of which over 90 per cent had been rehabilitated.
