Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has developed a three-pronged strategy to address the state’s transportation issues for effective vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
At the Bus Rapid Transit project’s groundbreaking, the governor detailed the government’s efforts to secure funding for the projects.
He said, “We began to explore the possibility of having a light rail stretching from Rigachikun to Maraban Rido and we made progress securing financing from Indian Xing Bank to the tune of 6 million dollars to execute that project.
“We engaged the famous French Transportation Consulting firm, Systra to do the feasibility studies as well as engineering design for the project,’’ he added.
El-Rufai, however, lamented that the government has “been unable to find an operator, someone that will operate the light rail when it is completed. And we think it is important to do that before we proceed.’’
He claimed that BRT, which the government first struggled to fund, was the second component of solving the transportation issues.
The governor said that “the French government kindly stepped in and through its development Agency, AFD offered us a line of credit, a concessionary line of credit to finance this project.’’
El-Rufai appreciated the “government of France as well as the Ambassador and her team for being patient and pushing very hard to get this project to this stage.”
He expressed confidence that Kaduna would have a working BRT system in a few years, transporting tens of thousands of people each day.
According to the governor, the government will collaborate on this project with the smaller bus companies and the Kaduna State Transport Authority to “carry most of the traffic of people coming to work and back home every day in the city of Kaduna.’’
‘’We hope with the success of this project, we will extend this to Zaria Metropolitan area and Kafanchan Municipal area and gradually to all our major towns and cities,’’ he said.
In response, the project was dubbed “ambitious” by the French ambassador to Nigeria, Emmanuelle Blatmann, who placed the foundation stone alongside the governor of the state.
She expressed the hope that other states in the nation will use the Kaduna model as a guide to follow.
Additionally, according to Blatmann, the initiative would benefit over 100,000 people, and the service will be used everyday by over 100,000 commuters.
