Three foreign firms eye Nigerian Railways
By Moses Ebosele, Transport Reporter
THREE foreign firms may already be making moves to invest in the ailing Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) as soon as the Federal Government announces its restructuring plan for the parastatal.
Two of the companies reportedly keen on running the corporation under a proposed concession arrangement are Spoornet of South Africa and CANAC of Canada. The third, a Chinese firm, was not identified by sources at the Federal Ministry of Transport and the NRC office in Lagos.
Preparations for the coming restructuring exercise, sources said, may have informed government slashing 65 per cent of its allocation to the NRC.
Last May, the government raised a 10-man committee to work out modalities to transform the NRC.
The committee, headed by the Minister of Transport, Chief Abiye Precious Sekibo, will evolve "viable procedures for competitive concessionaires and determine the modalities for the execution."
The Guardian learnt that representatives of the firms are able to work behind the scenes for now, because the government has not invited any application from them.
An NRC official said that before accepting applications from the firms, government will place advertisement in some local and international media spelling out the terms for participation.
The move, the source explained, is in line with President Olusegun Obasanjo's twin policy of transparency and accountability.
Other members of the presidential committee are the director general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), the chairman of the dissolved board of the NRC, Alhaji Waziri Mohammed, the corporation's managing director, Alhaji Abdulraham Abubakar and a representative of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
A statement by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media, Mrs. Oluremi Oyo, had listed the terms of reference of the committee to include an assessment of the state of the NRC.
It will also work out a procedure for implementing unhindered 25-year development plan of the railways and seeks to integrate it within the West Africa Transport network.
It was given six weeks to submit its report.
When The Guardian contacted the South African office of Spoornet, an official who responded did not confirm or deny that the firm was interested in the concessioning of the NRC.
Spoornet recently advocated the establishment of regional rail corridors to revitalise Africa's railway system.
CANAC, a subsidiary of Canadian Railways, was engaged by the Federal Government in February 2003 to draw up a business plan for the revival of the ailing parastatal. Some of its core workers left the country recently due to the non-availability of funds to continue with the project.
