The Minister of Transportation, Said Ahmed Alkali, has said that work was progressing well on the Abuja-Kaduna rail corridor and in the next 10 days the tracks would be restored after the derailment of the Abuja-Kaduna train on August 26.
The minister, who applauded the security and other stakeholders for their untiring efforts to ensure safety of passengers, workers and train facilities in the ongoing operations to restore the damaged tracks and coaches after the derailment, noted that if the weather permits, the track would be ready for use in 10 days from now.
Alkali, who stated this after an on-the-spot inspection of the ongoing clearing of the accident scene on Monday, further noted that the staff of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) have been working day and night to ensure that the clearing and repairing of the damaged tracks were done at the earliest possible time.
According to him, “Let me start by thanking Mr. President and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, for his support since the incident happened. He has given us support to ensure that we move the locomotive and the coaches and fixed the rail line so that we will be back into operation.
“From what I have seen, I also want to commend the managing director of NRC and his team because they are on site as you can see, day and night, trying to restore normalcy after the incident that occurred. Actually, the incident occurred at a point where we have two rail lines. Normally, we are running around two trains at a time. So there are points where the two trains will interchange. So, normally, we have a point there. That is where the accident occurred. However, I am not in a position now to pre-empt the investigation, to say why the incident happened.
“I am here with the full team from the Ministry of Transportation, Director of Railway and all his engineers and even the committee doing the investigation. The CCECC are here, civil rights organisation, all of us are here. So that we will ensure we have done justice to the investigation.
“I also want to commend the MD of CCECC and his team. He has been very supportive to our ministry and to the NRC since the incident occurred.
“At the time the accident occurred, the locomotive was carrying eight coaches. We have successfully moved four out of the place as you can see. We are trying to fix the infrastructure so that we have a bigger crane, so that we move the coaches and all the locomotive that are on the site. Insha Allah, in the next 48 hours, we will be able to move all of them out of the site. And after that, if we didn’t have any weather challenge, in the next 10 days, we are going to restore the line.”
He further stated that, “As you can see during my tour, where is affected by the accident is about 150 meters. So it’s not something too long. We will be able to fix the sleepers, the pallets and the rail track so that we will be back to operation. It is a cardinal responsibility of government to provide welfare for its citizens.”
On the efforts to prevent such events from happening again, the minister said: “The teams are doing our best to ensure that such didn’t happen again. However, it is the outcome of the investigation that will now reveal what actually happened. Then we look at it and we ensure it doesn’t happen again by the grace of God Almighty.”
