Track laying has been completed on the 156km, Chinese-funded railway between Lagos and Ibadan in Nigeria, it was announced this week. Â
The news was given in a tweet from China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), the company building the $1.5bn scheme.
This said: "A stunning victory! The track laying work on the main line for the Lagos-Ibadan railway has been completed at 12:08 pm on 28 March. This marks the fact the railway is getting one step closer to opening to traffic."
The line was originally given to CCECC back in 2012, but work only began in March 2017. When operational, the service is expected to have 10 stations and the trains will operate at a maximum speed of 150 km/h.
The section to Ibadan is part of a longer line between Lagos and Kaduna, in north-central Nigeria. This $6.7bn project, which is also being built by CCECC, was approved in 2018. It will intersect with CCECC’s first rail scheme in the country, a north-south link between Kaduna and the capital Abuja that was completed in 2016.
The Chinese contractor has also built Nigeria’s first rolling stock plant to produce wagons for the railway modernisation project.
Image: The new line (CCECC via Twitter)
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