KADUNA- ABUJA RAIL TRANSIT TO RESUME ON WEDNESDAY, 29TH JULY WITH ADJUSTED FARES- AMAECHI
Oru Leonard
The Honourable Minister of Transportation, Rt Hon. Chibuike Amaechi has said that the Abuja-Kaduna rail will resume on Wednesday, July 29, 2020 after about five month break due to covid-19 lock down which affected all sectors of the economy.
Honourable Amaechi who said this during the test run of 10 new coaches and two locomotives at the Abuja- Kaduna railway axis, revealed that the establishment is being pressured to resume the railway service before Sallah revealed that President Buhari approved the reviewed fares as N3000 for economy, N5000 for business class ànd N6000 for first class respectively, as against the proposed higher fare.
On whether the fare is not too high the minister said the price is affordable as most people are of the opinion that it’s nothing compared to the risk of kidnappers on the road.
On the commercial activities on Itakpe to Warri, he said the axis is more lucrative than the Abuja-Kaduna because by the time the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK), gas pipeline project starts, they will have to be conveying the pipes from Warri seaport to Itakpe but in terms of passenger burden we have moved from 300 passrngers per day to 4500 passengers per day, so in terms of passenger volume the Abuja-Kaduna railway is higher.
On the Lagos railway Amaechi stated, “We need about 1000 workers to work on Ebutte Metta station and we are only working with 10. The two things we can do is to either run skeletal services and be running 2 services one going and one coming that means they will be using the double tracks but they won’t be using the stations and if they have to use the stations nobody should complain that they are uncompleted stations but we will only do that if there is heavy pressure on traffic, if not they may have to wait till the stations are ready.
“We had targeted May and they were working towards May but unfortunately Covid-19 came, so we told them to complete the small stations cause that one is easy 10 persons can complete that station but the biggest station in Ebutte Metta they will need about 1000 workers on site and we don’t want to risk that because of spread of the virus.”
On the mounting pressure he said “we don’t want to expose the lives of people”.
On the Ibadan-Kano project
He said we are still waiting for money and also commented on a recent tweet that on the Ibadan- Kano rail project and said “I never tweeted anything I don’t have any Facebook or Twitter account the only social account I have is WhatsApp.
However, he said that no information should be disregarded from his tweeter account cause he has staff who may be doing such.
Speaking with journalist on the resumption the Governor of Kaduna state said “We are very grateful to the federal government particularly to the Minister of Transportation for the decision, we support it strongly we requested the federal government to suspend the train service at the time of onset of Covid-19 Pandemic and we believe it is time to resume the train service.
“We had written a request weeks ago when we relaxed the lockdown we have been briefed on all the measures put in place by the Federal Government to ensure physical distancing, hygiene and sanitary observance to protect everyone so we are looking forward to it.
We were told that the number of frequencies have been increased because more people will use the train.
On the issue of insecurity
The train is secure and well protected, even the Abuja-Kaduna highway is well protected , there has been no kidnapping case since Octo last year so am not worried about security but what I want to appeal to people using the train is to ensure they keep physical distancing, wash their hands, as Corona Virus is still much around, infections are rising and fastest way to get it is a congested train, so we must be very careful and not not insist on going on the train if it’s filled to capacity, and everyone must wear their face mask before entering the train, throughout the train ride and after that’s my appeal to everyone because this disease is still with us we have not reach the peak because when we reach the peak it will come down and their is likely going to be a second wave so we must continually be vigilant and obey instructuction about public health safety.”
On the increment of train fares. Governor El- Rufia said it is appropriate to increase fares. “I have always been of the view that the fares were too low and that is what has lead to racketeering because if you don’t get the ticket, you have to buy it from the middleman at twice the price so why shouldn’t the government capture that, so it is quite right I fully support the decision of the Federal government to increase the fares in fact the fares should be higher than this to make it difficult for middle men to come in”, he opined.
He further expressed that he had appealed to the NRC and the Minister to computerized and make electronic the purchase of the ticket to cut out middle men and all those that buy ticket and hoard them.
On his part, the Managing Director, Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), Fidet Okhiria, said that with the arrival of these Diesel Multiple Units (DMU’s), the corporation will now increase the frequency of trips on the Abuja-Kaduna line from eight (to and fro) trips to 14 per day.
The Manager, Abuja – Kaduna Rail Service, Paschal Nnorli, stated that prior to reopening, there will be fumigation of all rolling stocks and offices, also a policy of no mask no entry will be enforced at all stations. He further disclosed that more DMU’s are still being expected on the route to manage the high passenger traffic.
