On 30 October 2006, in the State House at Abuja, Olusegun Obasanjo and the visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao signed an $8.3 billion Memorandum of Understanding for the modernisation of the Nigerian railway. The MOU was for standard gauge (1,435mm) — incompatible with the existing 1,067mm Cape gauge — and the contractor was the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC). It was the largest single infrastructure agreement signed by any Nigerian government, and the architectural decision of the new century: Nigeria would not rehabilitate its colonial rail network. It would build a parallel one.
The original 2006 plan was a 1,315km standard-gauge double-track Lagos–Kano line, with a coastal Lagos–Calabar line to follow. By 2024, eighteen years and four presidents later, the system as actually delivered comprised three operational segments and one truncated stub.
Abuja–Kaduna (186km, single-track standard gauge): commissioned 26 July 2016 by President Buhari, the first standard-gauge passenger line in West Africa, designed for 150 km/h. Initial cost $874m, financed by China EXIM Bank at 2.5%/20-year. Lagos–Ibadan (157km, double-track): commissioned 10 June 2021, designed for 150 km/h passenger and 80 km/h freight, cost $1.5bn. Itakpe–Warri (327km, single-track): commissioned 29 September 2020 after 33 years on the drawing board — originally awarded by Shagari in 1983 to a Yugoslav contractor for the Ajaokuta Steel Company, abandoned for 30 years, completed by CCECC for $850m. Lagos–Calabar coastal: 1,402km, $11.17bn contract signed 2014, restructured 2018, broken into Tinubu-era segments in 2024; less than 5km of track laid by end-2024.
Three problems define the new system. First, the gauge mismatch. Standard-gauge passengers arriving at Ibadan terminus cannot transfer to the existing narrow-gauge for Kano; Warri-bound containers from the Itakpe corridor have to be transhipped at Ujevwu because the narrow-gauge yard at Warri Port runs on different rails. Second, the debt. China EXIM holds Nigerian rail loans worth $4.7bn (Sept 2024); annual debt service on the rail portfolio alone exceeds the entire 2024 federal capital budget for the railway sector. Third, security. On 28 March 2022 the Abuja–Kaduna service was attacked by armed bandits who blew up the track at the Katari–Rijana stretch, killed 9 passengers, kidnapped 62, and shut the line for fifteen months — the only major sustained passenger rail service in Nigeria, lost to the same insecurity that had emptied the road corridor it was built to replace.
The political shape is now visible. The 1898–1955 railway was built for export commodities to the coast; the 2006–2024 railway is being built for passenger movement between political capitals. Abuja–Kaduna, Lagos–Ibadan and the planned Kano–Maradi extension into Niger Republic all link administrative centres, not extractive hinterlands. Freight remains an afterthought; the standard-gauge network in 2024 moves less freight per kilometre than the colonial network moved in 1924. The country has acquired, at enormous cost, the second-most-modern passenger rail system in West Africa — and the same logistics economy of overloaded trucks, broken roads and 30,000-deaths-a-year highways that the previous Act described.
Figure 1
Nigerian Railway: route-km in service, 1901–2024
The colonial network was finished in 1927 and not extended for ninety years. The standard-gauge era began in 2016.
Figure 2
NRC annual passengers, 1955–2024 (millions)
From 17 million riders a year in the 1960s to under a million by 2015. The Abuja-Kaduna and Lagos-Ibadan SG lines have only partly reversed it.