Nigeria To Begin Manufacture Of Train Spare Parts

Nigeria is to begin the local manufacture of train spare parts soon, a development that would accelerate growth of the transport sub sector, as well as engineering technology in the country.

The train spare parts manufacture project is a tripartite initiative of the Ikeja Branch of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) and Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi (FIIRO)

The working group was inaugurated today at Ebute Meta, Lagos State.

Chairman of Ikeja Branch of NSE, Mr Tosin Ogunmola, while observing that the Federal Government had made a huge investment in railway construction, called for  support in the operations and maintenance.

He said that maintenance and operations aspects had been identified by the NSE as areas of local content development.

Also speaking, the Acting Director-General of FIIRO, Mrs Agnes Asagbra, expressed the optimism that Nigeria’s railway sector would evolve to world-class in the near future, adding that FIIRO had several foundries that could support the project.

She said that FIIRO was into prototypes and ongoing training in relevant areas that the collaboration could leverage from.

“This collaboration is definitely going to go places,” she said.

In his contribution, Mr Rotimi Olubowale who is the leader of the working group from the Ikeja Branch of NSE, stressed the importance of railway transportation to the growth of the nation.

He said the group would do its best towards achieving set targets.

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The managing director of  NRC, Mr Fidet Okhiri, while expressing optimism in the collaboration, said the manufacture of train spare parts would accelerate transport sector growth.

Okhiri also advised the engineers to begin production of smaller train components from which to migrate to the production of bigger ones.

Should Nigeria succeed in manufacturing trains spare parts, this would trigger development in not only in train transporting but the entire economy.