CCECC started the construction of the wagon assembly plant in Nigeria’s southwest Ogun state in January 2021. With an annual capacity of 500 wagons, the Kajola wagon assembly plant will produce flat, open top and box wagons.
By the first week of May 2023, the assembly plant has already produced and delivered the first wagons, with 220 more planned by the end of Q3 2023. With this step, Nigeria can replace its old freight wagon fleet and stop its dependence on imports of wagons from overseas. The feedback from the customer, Nigerian Railway Corporation, which has already put the first wagons into operation, is positive. Railway wagons from the Ogun plant will be used on Nigeria’s Lagos-Ibadan and Abuja-Kaduna railway lines.
The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Transportation, Magdalene Ajani, stated that the production plant would help facilitate freight movement and accelerate clearance from the ports to the dry inland ports and depots.
The Nigerian railway network has different railway gauges, split in an 80:20 ratio. The majority, 80%, is a 3,500 km long 1,067 mm narrow-gauge network, a remnant of the colonial era. The remaining 20% is a 670 km long standard-gauge network. This is, however, the developing part, where just a single line from Abuja to Kaduna (also built by CCECC and finalised in 2016) made half of all revenues of the railway network. This line is a part of the Lagos – Kano railway line, built by segments since 2006. This 1,343-kilometre line will connect the largest African city of Lagos on the Atlantic Ocean coastline with the capital of Abuja and Kano at the border of Niger.
