SIR PERCY GIROUARD'S NEW TASK

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 3 October 1907, Page 4

SIR PERCY GIROUARD'S NEW TASK

RAILWAY TO OPEN UP NIGERIA TO TRADE. Sir Percy Girouard, who built the desert railways in the Soudan, and who was Director of Railways in South Africa during the war, has been entrusted with the construction of a Nigerian pioneer railway of 3ft Gin gauge, -t(jo miles long, from Baro to Kano. The work will occupy four years, ami will cost £3OOO a mile, or a total of £1,230,000. In reply to Mr Shaekloton, the UnderSecretary for the Colonies stated ill the House of Commons recently that the starting point at Baro is the highest convenient point on the perennially navigable reaches of the Niger,and that the railway will pass through Beda Zaria and Zuiigcru. As the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria is approved in principle, and will probably be accomplished in the next few years, the money will be raised as a loan by Southern Nigeria, and will form part of the debt of the colony. As an off-set, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has agreed that the annual contribution of £70,000 now exacted from Southern Nigeria in aid of the finances of Northern Nigeria shall be reduced in any year by a sum equal to whatever interest charge may in respect of this loan be defrayed by Southern Nigeria. The Government has been led to this decision by three sets of considerations. First, the' enormous administrative and military difficulties of continuing to hold so' great an extent of territory as Northern Nigeria without any central lines of rapid communication; second, the' obvious financial disadvantages of paying a grant-in-aid of nearly £300,000 a year for a province whose commercial 'development is completely arrested for want of such communication; 1 and third, the immense importance of enabling British enterprise to reach the extensive cotton-growing areas of Nor- ' (hern Nigeria, and thus vary and miil- ■ tiply the sources of the supply of so vital a raw material.