FactCheck: Claim that governors are planning to build rail line that will connect five Southeast states, UNPROVEN

By Pascal Ibe

Claim

An X user @Onyema_7 has claimed that Nigeria’s southeast governors are currently planning to build a rail line that will connect all five Southeast states.

Verdict

This claim is UNPROVEN as there’s no strong evidence that supports the claim.

Full Text

An X user, @Onyema_7, has claimed that the southeast governors are planning to build a rail line that will connect all the five states in the zone.

The X user wrote that “H.E Alex Otti and other Igbo Governors are already working on the Eastern Speed Train that will cover both Enugu, Abakaliki, Onitsha, Owerri, Port-Harcourt and Aba. SE will be great again.“

The post garnered over 428k views, 6.6k likes, and more than 1.2k reposts, according to X analytics.

However, many people who commented on the post asked if this claim was true.

See the original claim on X here.

Verification

First, there’s no credible report or statements by relevant authorities in any of the southeast states that support the claim to be true.

In April 2024, the South East Governors’ Forum said the forum is partnering with the federal government and other international organizations to improve power supply and enhance rail transportation and other infrastructural development in the region.

The Director General of South East Governors’ Forum, SEGOF, Senator Uche Ekwunife said the governors are addressing the region’s infrastructure gap through strategic investments and partnership. She noted that the rehabilitation of the Eastern rail line by the Federal Government through the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) is a major milestone.

“Rehabilitation of the rail is ongoing with the first phase from Port Harcourt to Aba which is now set for commissioning this month of April. The second phase, extending from Aba to Enugu, is also underway. Knowing the concerns of Ndi-Igbo regarding a narrow-gauge system instead of a standard gauge, The South East Governors’ Forum is in partnership with the Ministry of Transportation and the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) to seek interventions in that regard”

There has never been any further report on this since then.

Also, in a report by the Guardian Nigeria, the rail rehabilitation project on the eastern corridor, flagged off by former President Muhammadu Buhari in March 2021, was to be funded by an 85 percent foreign loan and a 15 percent counterpart contribution of the federal government, with a delivery timeline of two years, has been abandoned.

The Eastern rail line, in its heydays, covered areas such as Bonny Ports in Port Harcourt, with a spur in Owerri, to link the Aba –Enugu rail line with spurs in Abakaliki and Awka, before linking Makurdi, Lafia, Kaduna, Bauchi, Gombe and Maiduguri in Borno

It was learned that the foreign loans required to fund 85 percent of the project were not available.

During an all-Southeast governors meeting in Owerri in 2023, Peter Mba, the governor of Enugu state challenged the South-East stakeholders to build critical regional infrastructure like railways and roads to create a common market and boost socio-economic prosperity in the region.

“Since we now have railways on the Concurrent List, nothing is stopping us. So, if we pick one or two projects from this summit that, we can say as a people of the South-East, we want to make sure that we execute them; I believe we can achieve them, and they are going to have a huge spillover effect on our economy and security,” the governor stated.