Suspended Abuja-Kaduna train service to resume, Saturday – Minister

Minister of Transportation, Mr Rotimi Amaechi has disclosed that the suspended Abuja/Kaduna railway service would resume operations on Saturday, October 23.

The Minister stated this while inspecting the Abuja/Kaduna railway after a blast that destroyed tracks around Dutse and Rijana station.

The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) had in a reaction to the Wednesday incident, suspended operations indefinitely on the Abuja-Kaduna train service following damage done to the rail tracks by an explosive device planted by suspected bandits.

The attackers also shot and destroyed the engine and driver’s compartment during the attack.

The NRC, in a statement via its website, on Thursday afternoon, said operations have been suspended till further notice.

“Due to unforeseen circumstances, train services have been immediately suspended for the safety of our dear passengers.

“Efforts are in place to restore service. Further information would follow immediately service is restored,” the statement said.

It is not yet clear as what alternatives are available to commuters who shuttle the route daily following the suspension of the train service.

Also reacting, Managing Director of the Corporation, Fidet Okhiria while denying claims that terrorist or bandits were responsible for the Wednesday attack on its train, said that a probe has begun to determine how the attack happened and ways to avert future occurrences.

The NRC boss added that the service should be restored by Thursday evening following the repair of the rail track

“It’s true our rail track was damaged.

“So we have issues with the track and we are fixing it. We are working to resume train services and by today’s (Thursday) evening, we should run if possible.

“We operated a train from Kaduna to Abuja this morning (Thursday) but we had to suspend operations due to the damaged track until we fix it.”

“I think what is significant is that the repair was done by our own Nigerian engineers and completed in record time. By tomorrow we expect to run the first train.”

Speaking on security of the rail lines in the country, the Minister said: “What this has done to us is that it will fasten the procurement process of a digital security system that we want to put in place it had gone to cabinet two weeks ago and it was returned so we will represent it to the cabinet to ensure that we get approval, then we can install the digital security network.

“The essence of the digital security system is to enable us to know when there is an impact on the rail. It has a sensor, when people walk across the rail we will be able to know. We will get the police to be involved so that they will be here before we install the security system.

“I’m happy, what this has done is that it has shown that we actually have the capacity to fix our rail. The essence of this is to make sure that by the time you leave, we should start the gradual process of constructing our own railway.

“You can see the lady engineer, however, she can be able to fix that, she and her colleagues will be able to do more kilometres of track laying and possibly track construction.”

The Minister assured the public that beyond the physical presence of police and deployment of the military along the track, buses would be on patrol regularly to monitor end to end from Abuja-Kaduna as well as Lagos-Ibadan routes.

On his part, the NRC chief, Okhiria, who was part of the minister’s inspection team, disclosed that the number of trips would be increased.

“Is better to run more trains as running more trains would not give people the opportunity to tamper/interfere with the tracts, because a train just passed from Abuja to Kaduna not quite 30mins when the explosion was executed and planted. And if we have all trains. The people would have to work very hard to be able to plant explosives. I believe that when we restart we would start with eight trips when we come back tomorrow maybe tomorrow we may run four trips but Sunday eight trips because Sunday is a busy day. So tomorrow we are running four trips so that we can run from Abuja to Kaduna and balance the train set while we are working on the loco that was affected. After fixing the loco that was affected, we would run our usual ten trips.”

The NRC MD added that, “The Commissioner of Police came here, the DSS is now going to be fully involved.”

On the issue of network jamming/communication on the axis, he said, “The situation necessitated pilot working. The train that the Maintenance staff brought to the site occupies the site and whether you call them or not you have to see the train back to the station physically and we have a pilot man that would tell us that there is nothing on the track again.

“He would be the person leading the driver. Before now we would have had what we call detonators that would blast three times. We would try and introduce what we had in Warri-itakpe, the satellite telephone so that we can communicate.”