Vincent Toritseju
Lagos — The Chairman, Board of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, NRC, Mr. Ibrahim Alhassan Musa has said that the number of pipelines of various products was the reason for the suspension of rail link to the Apapa port in Lagos.
Speaking to newsmen during an inspection tour of the Lagos-Ibadan rail link, Chairman of the Board of the Nigerian Rail way Corporation, Ibrahim Musa said that pipelines of gas, vegetable oil and petroleum products was responsible for the suspension of the construction of the rail lines into the Apapa port.
Musa said that linking the rail lines to the ports was not in the original plan in the national rail project adding that the port end of it was an addendum.
He explained that excavating the earth during construction in the Apapa area led to the underground discovery of these pipelines noting that in order to avoid any form of disaster due to explosion, the construction had to be suspended.
He said: You know Apapa was not part of the project ab initio, it was an addendum to the project. The initial design did not include Apapa Seaport. It was incorporated much later.
“It was a mixed grill of so many things, there were oil pipelines for petroleum products, and these pipelines have been there for a very long time.
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“You cannot come and start excavating and only God knows what could be in those pipelines, you can have explosion, you can have fire outbreak.
We have come across such pipes at Ijora and we are trying to see if we can relocate them before we start construction of the rail link into Apapa seaport.
“But beyond that, work has continue to progress into the ports but those areas in which we have encumbrances, we cannot continue to execute the link until we resolve that issue at Ijora.”
The chairman also disclosed that there are daily rail services between Port Harcourt Rivers Statae and Aba in Abia State.
