{"id":398125,"date":"2021-09-28T17:28:16","date_gmt":"2021-09-28T16:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=398125"},"modified":"2021-09-28T17:47:48","modified_gmt":"2021-09-28T16:47:48","slug":"fcta-to-work-with-nrc-to-actualize-railway-masterplan-minister-bello","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=398125","title":{"rendered":"FCTA to work with NRC to actualize railway masterplan – Minister, Bello"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Minister of the FCT, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, on Tuesday, assured that the FCT administration would work closely with the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) to actualize the nation\u2019s railway masterplan.<\/p>\n

Malam Bello gave the assurance when he received a delegation of the NRC led by its Board Chairman, Ibrahim Alhassan Musa, on a courtesy visit to the FCTA.<\/p>\n

The Minister, in a statement made available by his Chief Press Secretary, Anthony Ogunleye, said the design of the masterplan envisages Abuja as the railway hub of the nation with the sheer number of lines that will eventually crisscross the Territory, adding that the location of Abuja made it a natural choice for it to hold not only the position of railway hub but also the air hub of the nation.<\/p>\n

In the words of the Minister: \u201cI wish to assure you that we will continue to work very closely with the Nigerian Railway Corporation to actualize the concept of the railway masterplan, that envisages Abuja as the hub, in terms of all the lines that will eventually crisscross here\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlready, it\u2019s an air hub and it\u2019s only natural that it will also be a railway hub. It\u2019s just the reality of geography. By its very location, it\u2019s the natural thing to do and I assure you that we will work very closely with you to make sure that this is achieved,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the resumption of operations of the Abuja light rail, which was suspended at the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Minister assured that operations would resume in the near future, depending on how the pandemic plays out.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cWhen the Nigerian Railway Corporation re-opened their systems we couldn\u2019t and it was simply based on health concerns. The Light Rail system, the way it is configured and even the coaches, the way they are designed are meant to sit very few people and to have almost 75 percent of the passengers in standing position. We realized that there was absolutely no way we could ensure social distance in that situation\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Minister added, \u201cAs you know unless we reach a very wide coverage of vaccination and we have what the medical people call herd immunity, there is no way we are going to run the light rail system and ensure that passengers are conveyed in safety. That is the main reason why up till now, we have not resumed operations.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Minister of the FCT, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, on Tuesday, assured that the FCT administration would work closely with the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) to actualize the nation\u2019s railway masterplan. Malam Bello gave the assurance when he received a delegation of the NRC led by its Board Chairman, Ibrahim Alhassan Musa, on a courtesy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":398126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,6843],"tags":[2658,613],"class_list":["post-398125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-transportation","tag-a","tag-fct"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=398125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/398126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=398125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=398125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=398125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}