Nigeria has awarded a $6.68bn contract to the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) to build a major segment of a railway from Lagos, in the southwest, to Kano in the north.
"The signing of the … segment contract agreement today (15 May) concludes all outstanding segments of the Lagos-Kano rail line," the Chinese state news agency Xinhua quoted Nigeria’s transport ministry as saying. The work is expected to take two or three years.
CCECC, a subsidiary of Chinese state rail builder China Railway Construction Corporation, has been involved in other parts of the Lagos-Kano rail project, which started in 2006 and was broken into segments for implementation.
In 2016, Nigeria awarded it work on a segment between the northern states of Kano and Kaduna with a contract sum of $1.685bn.
The railway line is also receiving funding from China. In April, China Exim bank approved a $1.231bn loan for the network’s modernisation programme, Reuters reports.
Image: One of the historic gates into Kano, a commercial hub of about 3 million people in northern Nigeria (Wikimedia Commons)
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Now is the time to police foreign contractors in Nigeria construction industry with the help of the Nigeria Chartered Institute of Building [NCIOB] because knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave. Construction slavery in most part of the country can be bottle-neck with the ministry of labor. The China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation should front affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer and be committed to equal opportunity employment and complies with all applicable labor laws of the host country that prohibiting discrimination based upon age, color, creed, marital status, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability, as well as any other, Integrity that has been the cornerstone of the construction industry.
The Company should strive avoid discrimination or harassment of any employee by managers, supervisors or co-workers. If the NCIOB can get handles on both Labor laws and Construction Industry ethical rules and regulations, these will encourage and enforce the laws on all foreign contractors and subcontractors to perform transparency and due diligence by verifying whether agreements with suppliers of materials and labors engage in activities which categorize the definitions of slavery and making training available to local national staff. Any stringent labor laws or ethical regulations will minimize reputational risk and commercial threat on the part of the foreign main contractors. Good luck CCECC with the new contract award!