Abuja Light Train Shut Down Less Than Two Years In Service (pics)

The line was intended to bolster a bid for the Commonwealth Games; the games went to Glasgow, but Abuja didn’t adjust its transit plan to better serve residents, and ridership was less than 1,000 people per day.

A light rail system in the capital shut down after less than two years in service.

Recall that the Abuja Light Rail project phase 1 was commissioned by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2018.

The rail mass transit designed to convey passengers from its Metro station, located at Wuye District to the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, operated few months after the official commissioning and has been abandoned for almost 4 years now.

In July 2018, Muhammadu Buhari, the president of Nigeria at the time, boarded a gleaming new train linking the capital city, Abuja, with its airport. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Buhari hailed the system as “evidence that we are a government that delivers on its promises.”

Five years on, that promise looks empty. Train cars are locked away at a depot. Cavernous stations fully equipped with escalators, ticket offices, cameras and scanners stand empty, overseen by bored security guards. The faux leather couches in the VIP area are covered in bird and bat droppings. “It’s an abandoned project,” says Rowland Ataguba, an adviser to the government on rail strategy.

“Quite clearly there was no plan on how to run the operations before they built it.”