Secretary of the FCT Transportation Secretariat, Abdullahi Candido, has chided residents of the territory for their nonchalant and destructive attitude towards public facilities.
Candido, while inspecting facilities at the Abuja Light Rail Mass Transit yesterday, urged citizens to change for the better in order to fully benefit from public infrastructure and services provided by government.
Visibly appalled by the monumental vandalization of critical facilities of the rail system, Candido said, “The vandalism is voluminous. The magnitude of damage done by these vandals is not pleasing at all. Unfortunately, they have brought us backward as far as this effort is concerned.
“But fortunately, we have an administrator (Malam Muhammad Bello) who is committed to leaving a legacy, that is why we are here to take a look at it so that we will know how to tackle it within a space of seven months.”
The Secretary also apportioned blame on the Chinese company handling the project, “To some extent, I have to put the blame on CCECC for not doing the needful from the word go, by withdrawing the armed soldiers who were ensuring the security of this place.
“Withdrawing them brought us to this point. You can’t withdraw armed soldiers and replace them with unarmed personnel and expect to have the same result, because the vandals can take advantage of this and that was exactly what they did,” he noted.
Some of the vandalized facilities include rail tracks, signalling and communication equipments made up of sensitive cables and fittings, generating sets and air-conditioning systems, among several others.
He however could not estimate the cost of repairs of the damage since inspection and verification were still on. “I cannot quantify it in terms of how much we are going to use to resuscitate it, but we are going to take a look at it and present it to the Minister.
“Despite the fact that it (damage) is too voluminous, I am convinced that the minister has it in mind to leave a legacy. We need to look for a way forward”, he assured.