Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Amaechi, has blamed frequent locomotive breakdowns on the Abuja–Kaduna route on a lack of spare parts to replace worn-out sections.
The Minister made the remarks in Lagos, where he was inspecting the progress of work on the Lagos-Ibadan rail corridor, which had just been operational for a month.
“The issue with the breakdown of the Abuja-Kaduna train is due to a lack of maintenance, which is due to a lack of replacement parts,” he claims.
“We have written to Mr. President on this issue and he has graciously approved the purchase of spare parts for the Lagos-Ibadan trains. Very soon, enough spare parts for the Lagos-Ibadan rail will arrive in the country. By the time this occurs, we will use some of these parts for the Abuja-Kaduna, and hopefully, the issue of incessant breakdown of the trains will be resolved.”
The failed trains, according to Amaechi, were purchased in 2016 and had previously performed well. He insisted that the moment had arrived to service the trains with fresh spare components.
The Minister told journalists in Lagos that the Nigerian Railway Corporation is fine-tuning coordination of the completely established communication and the signaling system, and that once that is done, the number of excursions on the corridor will be increased from 4 to 8 each day.
“On the Lagos-Ibadan route, 42, 000 passengers were transported in June,” the Minister stated. “We expect the figures to spike in the following months because if we can transmit 42, 000 passengers a month after commissioning, then the figures can only climb as more people become aware of the train services.”
Speaking about the Nigerian Railway Corporation’s inadequate salary and welfare package, the Minister conceded that the corporation ranks last among the agencies under his supervision, but promised an upward assessment as soon as practicable.
Amaechi stated indigenous contractors had failed to achieve some qualifying conditions, such as 5 years experience in rail construction, for ongoing rail projects. According to him, the majority of these local contractors are “commission brokers,” and hiring them for such projects is comparable to signing Nigerians’ death warrants.
The Minister was accompanied on the inspection by the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Transportation, Dr. Magdalene Ajani, as well as the Ministry’s Directors and the NRC.
