Minister of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi signs a US $3.9bn deal with China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC) for construction of Abuja-Itakpe railway.

The public private partnership will consist of 15% Nigerian equity, 10% CRCC equity and 75% borrowed  SPV from the Chinese Bank.

“The signing ceremony that we had today is the first PPP (Public Private Partnership) railway agreement for Abuja-Itakpe or Abuja-Baru-Itakpe and Lokoja. Part of the agreement is that CRCC will provide us with a performance bond from their bank before we give a sovereign guarantee for them to be able to borrow the 75%,” said  Amaechi.

The contract will cover the Warri sea port and the whole construction will be done by CRCC and subsidiaries.

After construction CRCC will run the business in both the railway and the sea port for 30 years to recover from the money spent on both construction.

On completion this railway will be the longest in Nigeria. The Abuja-Itakpe railway will consists of 3,505 km of 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge lines and 507 km of standard gauge lines. Efforts are underway to develop the Cape gauge network as well as construct a new standard gauge network that can help transportation through this means to be suitable.

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