Senate has constituted an ad-hoc committee to investigate the alleged growing decadence in the operations of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, NRC.
The development followed the adoption of a point of order raised by Senator Abdul Ningi at plenary yesterday.
Citing Order 42 (personal explanation) of the Senate Standing Rules, Senator Ningi called the attention of his colleagues to what he called tragic history of the railway situation, particularly the Kano and Kaduna rail lines.
“Mr President, you will recall, like my colleagues will recall, the railway lines between Kano, Kaduna and Abuja was laid by the then President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. As he was departing, the rail line was commissioned.
“Subsequently, when late President Muhammadu Buhari took over in May 2015, he re-commissioned the lines, with about five heads of cargos and eight to 10 coaches.
“From 2015, the railway started commuting 10 trenches of movement, five from Abuja to Kaduna and five from Kaduna to Abuja,” he said.
Ningi, however, added 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 discovered was simply a tragic Nigerian story.
“I spoke with the 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 the Kaduna-Abuja road, most people come from Kaduna to work and travel back.
“The 10,000 passengers they were doing a day was reduced to about 800 to 900 passengers.
“The 10 shuttles they were doing a day was reduced, Mr President, to two times a day.
“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.
The lawmaker said he was at some time a sub-chairman of a Committee on SURE-P when the then administration of former President 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.
“As it looks, nobody is ready to do anything about it, without prejudice to Adams Oshiomhole’s committee that is saddled with investigating the decadence of the railway system in Nigeria.
“But this particular matter, I have also informed them as the ad-hoc committee chairman of the decay,” Ningi explained.
Contributing, Senator Adamu Aliero said NRC is facing serious revenue challenge, as the number of its trips had dropped from five to one.
He said the challenge was also caused by destruction of coaches by bandits, noting that fund is yet to be provided to replace the damaged coaches.
Aliero, however, said the federal government is on the matter and would provide funds to revamp the railway services.
The Senate president, who upheld the point of order, urged the ad-hoc committee to turn in its report to plenary in six weeks.
The committee, chaired by Senator Oshiomhole, has Senators Enyinnaya Abaribe, Osita Ngwu, Ibrahim Dankwambo, Ede Dafinone and Ireti Kingibe as members.
