A Nigerian legal practitioner has urged President Bola Tinubu to elevate rail expansion to the top of the federal transport agenda, arguing that a credible rail programme offers the fastest route to relieving road congestion across the country's busiest corridors.

The appeal, carried by THISDAY, places rail squarely alongside — and ahead of — continued road investment as a congestion-recovery measure. It echoes a long-running argument inside Nigeria's transport-policy community that the highway network cannot absorb the combined passenger and freight demand of a population approaching 230 million without parallel capacity on steel.

What did the lawyer propose?

According to the report, the practitioner framed the case around three operational points. Rail moves high passenger and tonnage volumes per unit of fuel, reducing truck and bus traffic that congests inter-urban highways.

Rail terminals concentrate freight at fixed points, easing the sprawl of trailers around Lagos port and northern destinations. Rail investment is, on the practitioner's account, the most capital-efficient intervention available for the road problem the Tinubu administration has identified as a binding constraint on growth.

The report does not name the practitioner, does not specify which corridors should take priority, and does not disclose whether the appeal was a formal policy submission or public commentary.

How does Nigeria's rail network compare with its road demand?

The Nigerian Railway Corporation operates roughly 3,500 km of largely narrow-gauge track inherited from the colonial era, plus the 187 km Abuja–Kaduna standard-gauge passenger line and the first phase of the Lagos Blue Line metro. The Lagos–Ibadan and Abuja–Kaduna standard-gauge services have absorbed most recent passenger growth, while freight haulage remains a small fraction of what parallel corridors carry by road.

The Federal Ministry of Transportation, which oversees both rail and road policy, has published successive capital plans that acknowledge rail as a priority sector. Delivery has lagged those plans: counterpart-funding disputes, right-of-way acquisition, and rolling stock procurement have repeatedly slowed standard-gauge construction, particularly on the Lagos–Kano corridor that China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation is building.

What is the congestion case?

Lagos accounts for an estimated 70% of Nigeria's port throughput, with the Apapa corridor handling most of the container traffic that subsequently moves north by trailer. A single freight train removes the equivalent of several dozen trucks from that route, freeing lane capacity for vehicles that genuinely require road access.

On commuter corridors, the substitution ratio is similarly large: a six-car diesel multiple-unit set replaces roughly 2,000–3,000 car trips per peak hour. The practitioner reportedly argues that these ratios are large enough that even partial delivery of the standard-gauge programme would produce measurable relief on the parallel road network.

What would Tinubu prioritisation look like?

A formal elevation of rail would show up first in the federal capital appropriation and in the timing of counterpart-funding releases. It would also appear in concession awards on legacy corridors, in the cadence of new rolling stock orders from suppliers such as CRRC and its competitors, and in the operational metrics the NRC publishes.

Absent such signals, the practitioner's appeal risks joining a long queue of similar calls that have produced little new track.

Outlook

The next federal budget cycle, and the supplementary appropriation tabled mid-year, will be the earliest indicator of whether the call registers inside the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Finance. Operators on the Lagos–Kano and Port Harcourt–Enugu corridors, and logistics users along the Apapa axis, will track those documents for the first concrete signal.