Nigeria, July 13 -- On March 19 this year, eight officials of the Federal Ministry of Transportation and the Nigerian Railway Corporation huddled together in Abuja with representatives of three contracting firms handling various sections of the Port Harcourt - Maiduguri Eastern Railway.

The meeting had a singular agenda: the narrow-gauge rehabilitation project - broken into three contracts - had failed and the government had now decided to wrest the contracts from the companies to enable it to breathe life into the project.

Mohammad Babakobi, the director of railway service at the transportation ministry, who chaired the meeting, lamented that the project, awarded in March 2011, "could not be completed till date despite the huge funds a...