Sanwo-Olu conducts final test running ahead

Lagos State Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, conducted the final test run of the brand new trains for the Red Line Project on Saturday, assuring residents that the official inauguration of the 37-kilometer rail project, scheduled for next week, Thursday, February 29, 2024, would surely hold.

It would be recalled that Governor Sanwo-Olu had said earlier that the official flag-off would be performed by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the scheduled date.

Recall also that Sanwo-Olu performed the ground-breaking ceremony of the Red Line Rail on April 15, 2021.

The governor arrived at the Ikeja Train Station of the Red Line Rail Project for the test run of the operation at Iju Station, accompanied by the deputy governor, Dr. Kadir Obafemi Hamzat; the commissioner for information and strategy, Gbenga Omotoso; and his counterpart in transportation, Oluwaseun Osiyemi.

Others were the Managing Director of Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA), Engr. Abimbola Akinajo, and Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Transportation, Mr. Wale Musa, among other senior government officials.

Speaking with newsmen after the tour, Sanwo-Olu identified a few finishing touches that needed to be put in place on the coaches, even as he reiterated his call to residents that the rail line was not for commercial activities, saying that they should desist from such.

He said the state government was resolved to continue to enforce compliance “to ensure that we clear the tracks because we do not want to record any fatalities.”

“This one is our final inspection at the Ikeja train station, and we just finished another test train ride on the Red Line, using one of the trains.

“And we have had a journey all the way to Iju and back. We still have a few cleanings to do inside the train themselves because they still have wrappers around them.

“We will continue to test the air conditioning, which is working because they all came from different climates.

“Other than that, it is the challenge around pedestrians on the track and the kind of wrong things we saw on those tracks, so you have seen that we will continue to do the enforcement.

“We will continue to do physical barricades on those lines, working with the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC), but the message here is really for our citizens living virtually on the track that a track is not a place of residence or commercial activities.

“We should continue to tell people to stay off it, and we will continue to enforce it and ensure that we clear the tracks because we do not want to record any fatalities.

“Because once the intra-train starts, it is not every two hours or three hours; it’s going to be fairly regular—10 minutes, 15 minutes—and we don’t want them to feel comfortable that they have to stay on track. It’s not a place for people to stay.

“That is the major challenge; we have reduced it considerably in the last two months, and we will not stop.

“Other than that, I think the stations are ready, the trains are ready, and I am sure Nigerians are ready.”