Everyone on the platform held their smartphones and digital cameras aloft on the mild September morning when I took my inaugural ride on the first-ever metro rail service launched in Lagos: Nigeria’s commercial capital, Africa’s largest city, and a place infamous for its crippling out-of-control traffic.
Around me, camera-mongering passengers awaiting their first ride beamed. Many had lived in the city for most of their lives, but never thought the day would come when they would see this sort of “miracle”. “I am so happy about the arrival of the metro rail service. I can’t believe I can travel from Mile 2 to Marina within 28 minutes,” said Femi Alade, a 38-year-old banker, smiling radiantly.
“It is a trip that would have taken me over two hours if I had boarded a bus.”
There are numerous jokes about Lagos traffic; like the one that says someone travelling to London could get there before you get home.
Called the Blue Line, the inaugural line is the first of six planned intra-city metro rail routes, according to the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA), the Lagos state transport agency created in 2002 by now-President (then-governor) Bola Tinubu. Built by the Chinese state-owned contractor China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), the Blue Line will span 27 kilometres when complete. The first (current) phase of the Blue Line stretches 13 kilometres and runs between two terminals: Marina (a district on Lagos Island that hosts several high-rise commercial buildings) and Mile 2 (a busy suburb on the mainland that connects to other Lagos suburbs).
On the day I rode, the Blue Line was thronged. Smelling of mint and hung with a slew of CCTV cameras, the Mile 2 terminal was busy with courteous officers quick to attend to those confused in navigating their way through the boarding process. The schedule showed six rides daily from Mile 2 to Marina and vice versa. (The full route takes 28 minutes, including 90-second waits at each of the three stations en route.) I took the second ride of the day, scheduled for 7:36 to 8:04. I skipped the long queue by paying
the 750 Naira (95 US cents) fare with a ‘Cowry card’ that I had purchased two years ago. I was that eager.
The four-coach blue train arrived at the terminal five minutes before departure, pulling out of the Mile 2 Station at 7:36 on the dot. The ride was smooth, much to the admiration of the passengers, many of whom were busy taking pictures and video-recording themselves. One, dressed in a yellow-chequered shirt and donning AirPods, video-called a friend in London: “We now have a metro train service in Lagos, so don’t ever tell me again that Londoners live a better life than Lagosians.” The guy’s friend couldn’t help but chortle. Hearing the mocking sound, I wanted to point out that the call was being made via the train’s free wifi network.
The only argh moment was when I noticed that the light rail train ran on diesel, not electricity. According to Abimbola Akinajo, LAMATA chief, the Blue Line is still being tested, but the tracks will be electrified. In an age of climate change, an electrified rail network seems the obvious way.
As we approached the final destination at Marina, excited passengers disembarked, some of them giggling and expressing can’t-wait eagerness to take the train back from Marina to Mile 2 at the close of work in the evening. “I can boldly say the experience was great. I’m wowed because if I had boarded a bus from Mile 2, I would not have gotten to half of the journey by now,” Peter Kolade, an insurance broker, told Cityscapes. “I’m happy I still look neat and fresh. If I boarded a danfo [the yellow minibuses commonly used in Lagos’s informal transport system], I would probably be sweating by now.”
Donning a green floral dress and brown sandals, passenger Chioma Ugo plucked her green iPhone from her brown purse and quickly took a few selfies against the backdrop of the train, her countenance showing she truly enjoyed the ride. “I had the pleasure of taking metro rides while studying for my Master’s in the United Kingdom, and I used to wish a facility like that would exist in Lagos,” Ugo said. “The trip was convenient, fast and cheap,” she added.
Lagosians were so excited by the Blue Line that it was among the top 10 Nigeria X (formerly Twitter) trending topics. They also greatly look forward to the day all the other metro lines will start working, connecting different parts of the city. As it is, the Blue Line cannot power a city of an estimated 20 million people, thousands of businesses and federal government parastatals.
Dr Muda Yusuf, a former Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry Director General, told Cityscapes that the Blue Line has brought significant relief to Lagos residents, whose mobility has for years depended on road transportation. “Transportation is a key component of managing urbanisation… In Nigeria, the bulk of intra-city transportation is provided by the private sector, which has led to much financial pressure on the citizens. So, from the citizens’ point of view, the Blue Line metro service has brought great relief, particularly to residents along the Marina-Mile 2 corridor,” Yusuf said.
Lagos’s metro service launch comes when transport fares have skyrocketed nationwide due to Tinubu’s May 2023 closure of a decades-long fuel subsidy regime. Saying the funds could be put to better use (e.g., supporting infrastructure, education and health), the subsidy removal immediately increased fuel prices by over 160%. As such, Yusuf feels the metro train launch could not have arrived at a better time. “After feeding, the next big challenge is transport, especially now that the [federal government] has removed fuel subsidies. Meanwhile, Lagos is big, and the metro service must expand to cover more routes. But the Blue Line is a good start,” he said.
The metro line idea dates back to the Second Nigerian Republic (1979 to 1983). Lateef Jakande, the first civilian governor of Lagos state and a former journalist, foresaw that going by its population growth rate and volume of economic activities, the city needed to explore the development of an extensive transportation network. He reportedly pitched the idea to then-president, Shehu Shagari, who backed it, instructing the Central Bank of Nigeria to help finance it.
Jakande hired the French consortium Interinfra, and with the support of the Apex bank, raised about $70 million in funding to kickstart the metro line. According to Lagosians, the line was designed to have 30 trains, each running 28.5 kilometres on raised concrete tracks. Expected to transit 88,000 passengers per hour to and from Marina and Agege (a mainland suburb), the metro, begun in 1983, was supposed to be completed in two years.
However, the country woke up on 31 December 1983 to discover that General Muhammadu Buhari had toppled the Shagari government in a military coup. Among other things, Buhari cancelled the metro line project—both for political reasons (his faction differed from Jakande’s) but also because he reportedly felt the country was too indebted. In addition, believing the risk of corrupt rent extraction was high, Buhari set up a related inquiry, and that was the end of that. Only lasting two years, Buhari’s regime fell in 1985 when the project was supposed to have been delivered. Meanwhile, Lagos State is said to have paid the French consortium a $78 million fine for the cancellation and breach of contract.
When Nigeria finally returned to democracy in 1999, Lagos then-governor Bola Tinubu, and his successor, Babatunde Fashola, both tried but failed to revive the line. Fashola’s successor, Akinwunmi Ambode, continued the project, passing it on to Sanwo-Olu, who became governor in 2019.
It is Sanwo-Olu who finally achieved Jakande’s vision by completing and launching the first phase of the Blue Line on September 4, 2023. Earlier in the year, Sanwo-Olu invited the same General Buhari who had cancelled the project to witness the Blue Line’s progress. Taking a ride from Marina to the National Theatre, the former president reportedly did not utter a word at the event.
Conceived and started by Sanwo-Olu’s administration, the metro’s second phase—the Red Line project—is next. “I believe we are on track to finish the project by the end of this year,” he said in late 2023. “We will push the contractors to work tirelessly… We will strictly enforce removing intruders from the rail corridor. We have given evacuation notices to all traders found on that axis. We will wall off the entire corridor to make it free for passengers’ movement when the operation starts,” he said. On 29 February 2024, the Red Line opened to the public.
People get anxious when the Nigerian federal or state government inaugurates a big project. There is a long line of reasons for this. The National Stadium in Surulere, Lagos, once a cynosure, is now a shadow of its former self, having been left unmaintained for years. It’s the same with the Tinapa Resort in Calabar, the capital city of Cross River State in South South Nigeria. Too many multibillion Naira projects across several cities in Nigeria are today in a state of decay, disrepair and abandonment.
A public affairs analyst in Lagos, Tunde Bankole, accused the state government of a poor maintenance history, citing how some of the transit buses deployed for the city’s rapid transit system are already in a deplorable state. “Some of the buses purchased less than four years ago are now looking rickety. Some of them have their cooling system already damaged. This can’t be allowed with the rail lines,” he noted. “Some people may want to sabotage the metro service, especially danfo drivers, who in most parts of the city may not be happy with the introduction of the train service because it may take away their source of livelihood. So the government has to be up and…protecting the assets,” Bankole added.
Lagosians share these concerns. “I hope we won’t wake up one day and see that the Blue Line service I experienced today has deteriorated or that the trains have disappeared. I hope the Lagos state government has excellent maintenance measures in place,” quipped my fellow passenger Matthew Otor.
Yusuf believes that as a public-private partnership concession, the project will stay on track. I for one will keep riding.
