By Kingsley Okoye
The Senate has constituted an ad-hoc committee to investigate alleged growing
decadence in the operations of Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC).
The development followed the adoption of a point of order raised by Sen. Abdul
Ningi (PDP-Bauchi) at plenary on Thursday.
Ningi, citing order 42 (personal explanation) of the senate standing rules, called the
attention of his colleagues to what he called the tragic history of the railway
situation, particularly, the Kano and Kaduna rail lines.
Ningi recalled that the Nigerian railway lines between Kano, between Kaduna and
Abuja was laid by the then President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 which was
commissioned before his departure. And subsequently, when the late President
Muhammadu Buhari took over in May 2015, he further re-commissioned the lines,
with about five heads of cargos and about eight to 10 coaches.
According to him, “From 2015, the railway started commuting 10 trenches of
movement, five from Abuja to Kaduna and five from Kaduna to Abuja,”
Ningi, however, said that his investigation revealed that NRC was commuting
10,000 passengers in a day as at then.
“Last two weeks, I visited Kaduna with the railway and what I found and
discovered was simply a tragic Nigerian story. I spoke with leader of the railway,
that is the manager, and he rendered these statistics to me.
“First, he told me they were commuting 10,000 passengers and because of the
terrible nature of Kaduna-Abuja road, most people come from Kaduna to work and
travel back to Kaduna.
“The 10,000 passengers they were doing a day was reduced to about 800 to 900
passengers. The 10 shuttling they were doing a day was reduced, Mr. to two times
a day.
“And I was told that while the railway was working on full capacity, they were, of
course, generating a revenue of N1.8 billion monthly,” Ningi said.
He also revealed that he was, at some time, a sub chairman of a committee on
SURE-P, when the then administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan
injected billions of naira into the nation’s railway system.
According to him, Nigeria cannot, as a nation, continue to allow decadence of its
infrastructure and scarce resources.
“Mr President, this is very disturbing; it should not only disturb me, it must disturb
this senate and Nigerians.
Contributing, Sen. Adamu Alero (APC-Kebbi) said that NRC was facing serious
revenue challenge, as the number of its trips had dropped from five to one.
He said that the challenge in operation was also caused by destruction of coaches
by bandits, saying that fund had yet to be provided to replace the damaged
coaches.
Alero, however, said that the Federal Government was on the matter and would
provide fund to revamp the railway services.
The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, who upheld the point of order, urged the
ad-hoc committee to turn in its report to plenary in six weeks.
