- As NRC demands N61b for maintenance, insurance, others in 2022 fiscal allocation
By Demilade Aderibigbe
The Chairman Senate Committee on Land Transport, Senator Abdufatai Buhari, has said the Senate may consider enacting a law prescribing death sentence for vandals of rail infrastructure.
He made this remark yesterday in Lagos during the oversight visit of National Assembly Joint Committee on Land Transport.
According to him this has become necessary because the intension of rail track vandals is to kill passengers.
“You can imagine the number of people that will be affected if a rail track is removed and the train derailed if a train driver unknowingly runs into it”, he said.
Buhari pledged to give the necessary legal backing to management of Nigerian Railway Corporation in its drive to modernise its infrastructural facilities.
Buhari led other lawmakers to inspect ongoing construction works at Apapa and also went round the Mobolaji Johnson Train Station at Ebute Metta junction, Lagos.
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NRC’s Managing Director Engr. Fidet Okhiria, explained that the corporation had been battling with vandals in the past, adding that some had been arrested and prosecuted.
He added that about 46 such cases are currently in various courts across the country.
Okhiria also said that owing to up scaling of rail infrastructure, the corporation has increased the frequency of passenger and goods trains.
According to him, more coaches would be released on the Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge corridor to accommodate the growing passenger traffic demand.
He said the corporation would also be employing about 1,000 new staff who would be deployed on the new lines of Itakpe-Ajaokuta-Warri; Abuja-Kaduna and Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge lines to provide critical services for the passenger and freight services.
Addressing the reason behind the visit by the lawmakers, Okhiria disclosed that it had to do with the budgetary requests of the corporation in the coming year.
He added that in the year 2020 the total value of modernisation contracts awarded by the corporation stood at N9 billion
By 2022, the corporation requested for N61 billion for procurement of spare parts, insurance of locomotives, rehabilitation of railway tracks sidings, rehabilitation loco lines amongst others.
