NIGERIA: President Jonathan's claim of railway revamp is a fluke by Okoi Obono-Obla

The Jonathan regime has a predilection of lying about everything. It is a regime that is steeped in mindless corruption. It is a regime that lives in perpetual self-denial.

As the 2015 general election looms large, spin doctors of the regime have gone into town churning false claim of the monumental achievement and transformation of the country by President Jonathan.

One of the lies the Jonathan’s presidency has been telling Nigerians is the supposed resuscitation of the comatose railway sub sector. It has touted the transformation of the railway infrastructure as one of its achievements.

However the my trip to Makurdi, Capital of Benue State of Nigeria on the 23rd September, 2014 and a tour of the Railways station, railway yard and the bridge in Makurdi and the tracks reveals to me starkly the fact that the claim by Jonathan’s presidency that it has revamped the railways system in Nigeria as a fluke, deception and a gimmick well calculated to pull wool over the eyes of undiscerning Nigerians.

The Makurdi Railway Stations is in a state of total dilapidation, dereliction, disuse and abandonment. The railway tracks in both the Northern and Southern sectors are over grown with weeds and have been turned into refuge dumps.

I saw railways wagons that are derelict, disused and abandonment for several years. The rustic sleepers and tracks are the ones that were installed by the British Colonialists hundred years ago which glaringly show that there has been no renovation whatsoever.

Also the road and railway bridge at Makurdi has not been renovated during the past twenty years. The non-maintenance of the bridge is a disaster waiting to happen. The Benue Railway Bridge was commissioned on the 24th May 1932 by the then Government of Nigeria, Sir Donald Cameron. It is a piece of ingenuity in engineering and beautiful sight to behold. The bridge that should be a national monument and a tourist attraction is on imminent danger of collapse due to benign neglect by the Federal Government that constitutionally is vested with the responsibility of development and maintenance of railway infrastructure in the country.

Some of the lands adjoining the railway tracks have been appropriated by private people. I saw a Church and Car wash garbage in some parts. It was a sad and horrible sight to behold. It was evidence of how things have deteriorated in our country for the past 15 years.

I took photographs that I will publish on the net to show that the so called revamping of the country railway system by the administration of President Good luck Jonathan is a gimmick to deceive Nigerians again into voting for a corrupt infested, clueless, direction less, purpose less, incompetent regime that has virtually brought the country to the nadir.

I toured the railway in Makurdi that use to be one of the major railway lines in the railways architecture of the country. The Makurdi railway Station was a sort of hub between Southern and Northern Nigeria.

The Makurdi line connects Makurdi-Lafia-Keffi-Gudi-Kafanchan-Jos-Kaduna in the heydays of the railways transportation in the North and Central regions; while in the South, the Makurdi line connects Enugu-Afikpo-Umuahia-Port Harcourt.

The pertinent question is: If a major railway line such as the Makurdi line is still in a state of disuse and abandonment; How on earth can the Jonathan’s presidency, claim that it has resuscitated the Nigerian railway of the country.

Culled from Indepth Africa