A former Managing Director of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), Mazi. JC Nwankwo, has explained that inadequate coaches is one of the reasons passengers still hang on the roof of moving train.
Nwankwo gave this explanation last week in an interview with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos was speaking on the circumstances of the train derailment that occurred recently in Lagos where some persons were reported to have died.
He maintained that the number of passengers is more than the capacity of the coaches as a result people in their bid to minimize spending climb the roof of the train, thereby making it difficult for the drive to concentrate.
He explained that, “If you are building a new railway line, you may not have the ability to maintain the old one; you don’t have to be pumping so much money. If you watch on this route the number of coaches provided does not contain the number of passengers that they have and that is why you see passengers hanging on the roof. Because the number of people is more than the capacity people are tempted to climb up and stand on the roof and under that condition, the driver cannot concentrate”
“If anybody fails-off and die they will hold the driver responsible so the driver has to be extremely careful. I am sure you will agree with me that the railway is still the safest; they will investigate and make sure that it didn’t happen again. The average Nigerian wants to manage his income and train is one of the transport services that gives them that leverage and if they miss it they will be sacked from work and some of them if they miss it, it will affect the days income so they must travel on it”
The former Railways MD, however advised the government to bring more coaches to serve the needs of many Nigerian travelers, adding that the government should introduce a programme which will help to phase- out the narrow gauge.
“There are times the Police department here will arrest them, charge them to court; sometime jail them and when they come out they still climb the train because there is no solution yet. Bring more coaches and people won’t climb the train again”, he stressed.
Nwankwo also reiterated that for the country to achieve its potential in the area of transportation there is need for inter-modalism.
“There is no place in the world where if you want transport to play its role in the development of that nation, you concentrate on one aspect of transport; there must be inter-modalism between the water, the land and the air, even pipe, there must be inter-modalism. If you miss it, you can never achieve a good transport system.
Discussion about this post