FEC: Rail transport gets boost of $2.81bn for rolling stock procurement

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, resolved that the sum of $2,810,574,064.92 be released to the Ministry of Transportation to facilitate the procurement of rolling stocks.

The resolution was after hours of deliberation.

Beyond the rolling stocks, the funding would also go into other operational and maintenance equipment, especially for the Ibadan to Kano and Port Harcourt to Maiduguri rail lines.

Giving further insight into the approval on Wednesday in Abuja, the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, noted that the contract became necessary to enable hitch-free operations of the nation’s revamped rail system.

 “I got an approval of the cabinet to procure rolling stocks, operational and maintenance equipment for the new railway projects corridors in Ibadan to Kano standard gauge and Port Harcourt to Maiduguri narrow gauge rail lines to the tune of $2,810,574,064.92, including 7.5 per cent tax.

“Rolling stocks are consumables for the maintenance and operation of the railway. So, currently, anytime you hear of break down, which was discussed in the cabinet, it’s because maybe we have run out of rolling stock and we’ve also run out of stock for the railway.

“So, with this, we will replace all the rolling stock. They are essentially the consumables we use to maintain the trains, coaches and locomotives”, Amaechi stated.

It would be recalled that owing to some controversies between the Chinese and Nigerian government, loan facilities for developing the rail sector has been kind of slow in recent times, prompting the Transport Minister to channel attention to European Banks for funding, even as the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari gradually winds down.

Also, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, under Isa  Pantami’s purview got a nod to outlaw the use of generic internet domains by federal government officials and institutions for official purposes.

He said the council approved the National Policy on the Government Second Level Domain, which has mandated the migration of all official communications from the generic domains to the nation’s second level domain under government top-level domain.

Pantami explained that the new order has made the use of generic domains for official federal government business a crime.

“The policy has been entitled as National Policy on the Government, Second Level Domain. This policy has been approved, and it focuses more on mandating federal public institutions, ministries, departments, agencies, and all institutions as long as they are for government that they should migrate from using generic domain in their websites and their emails to our second level domain under government top-level domain.

“For example, you will discover today, some government institutions will engage in official communications using private email yahoo.com hotmail.com gmail.com. And it is an official communication and someone may retire or will complete his tenure or the tenure can be terminated, and he will go with the same email. And in that email, there are many official documents.

“So, this will not be tolerated by government anymore. Any official communications must be using official email and that email should not be a generic one, it must be .gov.ng. What is most important is .ng that is our national identity.

There are many categories of the second level domain, some are for military, you will see like mil.ng mil is a short form of Military. Dot ng for Nigeria. You can see .gov.ng. Gov for government and ng for Nigeria.

“So, there are categories of the second level domain, while our country top level domain.ng must be there in our websites, so that whoever gets access will know that this website is from Nigeria, while for email, it must reflect the official name”, Pantami explained.

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