By Chioma Nnodim
Secretary, FCT Transportation Secretariat, Abdullahi Adamu Candido has expressed serious discontent while inspecting facilities at the Abuja Light Rail Mass Transit in the nation’s capital, on Wednesday.
According to him, “non-chalant and destructive attitude of Nigerians towards public facilities is very bad, disappointing and must change for the better for citizens to fully benefit from such utilities, infrastructure and services.
Visibly appalled by the monumental vandalisation of critical facilities of the rail system, Candido said, “The vandalism is voluminous. The magnitude of damage done by these vandals is not pleasing at all. Unfortunately, they have brought us backward as far as this effort is concerned.
“But fortunately, we have an administrator, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, who is committed to leaving a legacy and that is why we are here -to take a look at it so that we will know how to tackle it within a space of seven months”.
Candido also apportioned some of the blames to the Chinese company handling the project.
“To some extent, I have to put the blame on CCECC for not doing the needful from the word go, by withdrawing the armed soldiers who were ensuring the security of this place.
“Withdrawing them brought us to this point. You can’t withdraw armed soldiers and replace them with unarmed personnel and expect to have the same result, because the vandals can take advantage of this and that was exactly what they did”, he noted.
Some of the vandalized facilities include rail tracks, signalling and communication equipments made up of sensitive cables and fittings, generating sets and air-conditioning systems, among several others.
He however could not estimate the cost of repairs of the damage since inspection and verification were still on. “I cannot quantify it in terms of how much we are going to use to resuscitate it, but we are going to take a look at it and present it to the Minister.
“Despite the fact that it, damage, is too voluminous, I am convinced that the Minister has it in mind to leave a legacy. We need to look for a way forward,” he assured.
