The Minister of Transport, Chibuike Amaech has disclosed that his ministry spends N200m out of the N300m generated monthly from the Abuja -Kaduna rail line to service the Lagos-Ibadan railway.
Amaechi disclosed this while speaking as a guest on Channels Television.
The minister said the rail line which gulped around $1bn has started making meaningful contribution as it generates N300m which translates to N3.6bn annually.
Based on figures from the Nigerian Railway Corporation, the Abuja-Kaduna train service generated N265m every month.
The Lagos-Ibadan rail service generates N17m, while the Warri-Itakpe generates N45m.
But the minister said out of the N300m generated monthly from the Abuja-Kaduna train service, only N100m is remitted to the Federations Account.
He said, “We make N300m per month from the Abuja-Kaduna train.
“Currently, we are running Lagos-Ibadan from the money we are making from Abuja-Kaduna rail service, at the end of the day, we pay back over N100m to the federal government.”
A breakdown of the figure may mean that the country has generated around N3.6bn in the last twelve months from the Abuja- Kano train station out of which N2.4bn has being used to run the Lagos -Ibadan station and other expenses.
In the last twelve months, it may also mean that N1.2bn has been remitted to the FG from the revenue generated.
Earlier this year, Amaechi had revealed that $2.5bn was borrowed to construct the Lagos – Ibadan railway.
During the Channels TV programme, ‘Hard Copy’, he further revealed that the country has the capacity to repay all debt secured to build infrastructures.
According to him, work on the Kano-Maradi and Port Harcourt – Kano railway will commence by the end of January.
The Kano-Maradi rail line will cost $1.9bn, while the Port Harcourt – Kano is estimated to cost $3bn.
