The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has lost over N531 million in estimated ticket revenue on the Abuja-Kaduna Standard Gauge Train service.
This followed the March 28, 2022 attack on the train servicing the route by armed bandits who abducted several passengers.
NRC’s Managing Director Fidet Okhiria said this at a media briefing at the corporation’s headquarters yesterday in Lagos.
He said the figure was for the five months – between March 28 and August.
The managing director, who regretted that some of the abductees, including four NRC workers, were still being kept by the bandits, assured the nation that the Federal Government was doing everything humanly possible to get them released.
Okhiria said: “The whole essence is not to release these people by force, because that could lead to incurring unwarranted collateral damage. That is why the security agencies are bidding their time to negotiate their freedom.”
On efforts to provide tight security for the fixed and rolling assets of the nation’s railways, the NRC boss said the Federal Government had set up a committee headed by the Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Transportation, Dr. Magdalene Ajani, to examine the security architecture necessary for the security of all the rail networks in the country.
He said the government would deploy real time technology and security systems that would be complemented by the stationing of security agents at various strategic locations on the Abuja-Kaduna corridor.
Okhiria urged Nigerians to always support the Federal Government to end attacks on railway assets across the country.
According to him, it is a sheer act of wickedness to willfully attack and vandalise the nation’s assets which would reverse all the gains already made to bequeath a befitting railway system to Nigerians.
The NRC boss debunked reports in which the corporation was accused of stopping the Lagos-Ibadan Standard Gauge Train service.
He said the service had been running four scheduled services daily, while the Itakpe-Warri train runs two train services daily.
But Okhiria regretted that the March 28 attack had negatively affected the projection of the corporation that the Abuja-Kaduna train, which ought to have increased to 12 trips per day, while the Lagos-Ibadan ought to have been making 10 trips per day, have not met the targets.
