The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has said that Kano State will house the biggest rail station in the country.
Amaechi stated this when a delegation from Kano State, led by Governor Abdullahi Ganduje visited him in Abuja to discuss the rail and inland container depot project in the state.
”We have two major projects we want to do in Kano; the first being the standard gauge from Kano to Kaduna. We are applying to Kano State Government to give us land to build the biggest station in Nigeria. It is the biggest station because we are combining two rail lines. The first is the Kano – Maradi, which will empty in Kano and then the second one is Kano – Kaduna, which will also empty in Kano.
”Don’t forget the station we are building in Kano will be the station that will take passengers from Lagos to Kano. If you combine Kano-Maradi and Lagos-Kano, you will know that the volume of passengers you will get in a week will be about a million passengers,” Amaechi said.
The Minister said there will be an expansion in the concept of the Kano rail station, which is largely the same framework as the Lagos station but has more space.
He said the visit of the Kano delegation was also an opportunity to deliberate on the inland container depot project in Dala, Kano State, which was already at the advanced stage.
He said a delegation of the Federal Ministry of Transportation would visit the Dala ICD site on March 5 to ascertain the level of work and determine how the Federal Government can accelerate the completion of the facility, which is being promoted by the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC).
Earlier, Ganduje said that the state government had contributed about N2.5billion to the ICD project to ensure its speedy completion and commercialisation.
“We are investing about N2.5billion, we are providing access road, we are providing also other social amenities just to contribute our own quota. That project was conceived 20 years ago but never materialised until during our time. So, I make sure that this project is a reality and in order to do that we have to provide enabling environment to contribute our own quota,” Ganduje said.
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