I was the brains behind Standard Gauge Railway — Wanjigi

Businessman Jimi Wanjigi has revealed that he was the brains behind the Standard Gauge Railway.

In an interview with Citizen TV on Sunday night, Wanjigi said SGR was initially supposed to cost Sh55 billion but said the figure skyrocketed to over Sh300 billion.

"What I recall of the project cost was something like Sh55 billion, from Mombasa to Malaba. After 2013, it came to my attention that it was now not a project worth Sh300 billion just from Mombasa to Nairobi. And I said this does not make sense to me. This is where we differed on policy," he said.

Kenya borrowed more than Sh300billion from China to build the 472-kilometre railway from Mombasa to Nairobi.

It borrowed another $1.5 billion for a second branch from Nairobi to Naivasha.

Wanjingi said the SGR which he birthed in 2008 with a company called China Road and Bridge was supposed to be a private railway not public.

"We birthed it, we spent a lot of money doing what you call feasibility studies and technical studies. The intention was to make it private nothing to do with the government. In fact, the government was only supposed to provide land for it which we were prepared to lease. It was like a real estate project," he said.

"It not only became about money it also was about government doing it. The intention was not to take taxpayers money for this project."

He said the railway line was supposed to run from Mombasa to Malaba and not just to Nairobi.

"The Chinese had given money, I suggested it be re-allocated to roads. I am a businessman, I want to make money. The debt we have of the railway is phenomenal," he said.

The 480km line shortens the passenger travel time from Mombasa to Nairobi from more than 10 hours to a little more than four hours.

Freight trains complete the journey in less than eight hours.

Main construction works on the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway line began in December 2014 with China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) being the primary contractor.

The railway line opened in 2017 and celebrated 1,000 days of operation in February 2020.

Wanjigi further revealed that he was also involved in the planning and construction of the Thika Superhighway.

“I was an agent of companies that participated in Thika Road, I even raised the money, because ADB funded about Sh22b there was a shortfall of about Sh10b which we managed to raise from China,” he said.

“In 2003, when the president was going to China, I had a lot of Chinese government friends, and one of the things they were offering as a gift to the Kenyan people through the new president was a stadium."

" I went and pleaded and said there are enough stadiums in Kenya and especially in Nairobi, at the time, what Kenyans need is an improvement of roads because our infrastructure under the previous administration had become very dilapidated. We managed to get a grant, a gift to the Kenyan people, of $150 million that did the road from the airport all the way to Gigiri.”

Edited by D Tarus