Friday, 30th January, 2026, was the day I visited the site of the ongoing Kano-Maradi Railway Project. An ambitious project produced by cerebrable minds who could foresee the future and always think ahead of time. While I was inside of a public bus, heading for Fago, Sandamu local government area of Katsina state, to track a completed section of the 284-kilometer railway, I asked my humble self some thought-provoking questions: Why should our leaders embark on this gigantic project?  Why has President Bola Ahmed Tinubu not abandoned it? Does the common man in the streets ever pause to reflect on its long-term benefits? Especially under the atmosphere of propaganda and ridiculing of similar big projects such as the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Superhighway and the Sokoto-Badagry Super-Highway? 

By the time I disembarked from the bus and headed straight to the tracks, I was wondering why the same people who, whenever they returned from their extravagant foreign vacation, bombarded us with stories of high-speed trains in Tokyo and how they missed a train ride via the Channel Tunnel and exaggerated even services they fully paid for could now rise against efforts to provide these kinds of amenities in their home countries.  You know some people are not only selfish but also very sadistic. Since they can afford lavish vacations in London, Vienna, Madrid, and Hamburg, they have become so mean that they don't want the common man to even taste the luxury of the standard gauge railway.

President Bola Tinubu is not building underground stations nor constructing the Eiffel Tower or trying a vanity project like the Burj Khalifa. He just wanted to reconstruct superhighways to link various parts of the country. Yet he is being condemned by people whose only expertise is criticism.

I want to commend Mota Engil, the company handling the Kano-Maradi Railway. Railway construction is both labor- and time-consuming; yet achieving 65% completion is no mean feat. Kudos!

The Kano-Maradi Railway is very strategic. Linking Kano (the commercial center of Nigeria) and Maradi (the commercial center of the Republic of Niger) would boost trade. Traders that now rely on trailers to move bulky goods would find trains cheaper.

The Kano-Maradi Railway would accelerate economic integration, increase intra-African trade, and stimulate agricultural growth and urbanization.

Comrade Bishir Dauda Sabuwar Unguwa Katsina.