The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), on Thursday, raised the alarm over a surge in the rate of Railway tracks vandalisation in Lagos, lamenting that many arrested culprits have always been released from police detention after arrest.
This is even as the Corporation said that in the last week since it commenced free train rides in line with a Presidential directive, over 60,000 passengers have been moved on all its train routes nationwide.
Speaking with newsmen in Lagos during the Corporations 2023 End Of Year briefing, the Managing Director of the NRC, Engineer Fidet Okhiria lamented that the cases of rail tracks vandalisation between Mushin and Oshodi are becoming very alarming and disturbing.
According to Engineer Fidet Okhiria, “The most pressing issue that we have now is vandalisation of Railway tracks.
It’s a big problem because once we replace the clips, the people vandalising the clips come back to cart the new clips away.
“A recent case happened just before Christmas between Mushin and Oshodi here in Lagos. 200 clips were removed from the modernised railway track. Three days after we replaced the vandalised section, we went there and saw that the newly replaced clips had also been removed.
“We are still looking for a way to protect that section of the rail tracks. Yesterday, we had a management meeting and discussed on possible measures to safeguard the rail tracks in Lagos.
“Also, we are trying to recommence our Lagos to Kano operations by next year. Remember that during the maiden visit of the Minister of Transportation, we were given a task to ensure we start running Lagos to Kano by December. We are working on this mandate in-house. As we speak, some locomotives and wagons have arrived in Minna successfully. Hopefully, by the weekend, we will have moved them to Kaduna.
“We would have also moved from Kano, but we have security issues around that axis. Some sleepers were removed near Kano. However, the police are on top of the situation there for now.
“For the Warri-Itakpe rail, we had the tracks vandalized earlier in the year. But ever since we replaced the vandalized sections, we have been running train operations on the track without any record of any other vandalisation.
“The problem is whenever we arrest the culprits involved in Railway track vandalisation, they always find their way out of police custody.
“Like I said earlier in one of my briefings, I think we should look inwards and beam the searchlight on the iron companies who manufacture irons. We suspect that these iron companies patronise those that sell iron scraps, thus encouraging vandalisation of Railway tracks.
“On the free train ride policy of the Federal Government which started on the 21st of December, we have moved over 60,000 passengers thus far.
“It’s a 15-day window and we are optimistic that we will move more passengers before the free train ride directive comes to an end.
“Our advice to passengers is for them to get their free ticket online. All our Ticketing offices at the train stations have been closed because we want to avoid a situation where passengers will rush to get tickets.
“Even when we commence commercial operations, we will still encourage passengers to book their tickets online.
“So far so good, between 21st to 26th of December, we have moved over 60,000 passengers free of charge on all our routes nationwide.
“Government has been able to provide us money for fuel, and that’s why we have been able to run the free train ride without issues.”
READ ALSO FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
