At the spate locomotives are breaking down mid-journey in Nigeria’s rejuvenated system of rail transportation, it is legitimate to ask whether the renaissance is for the long haul or a fleeting, money guzzling fancy.
Within the space of a week last month, passengers were twice stranded on the Kaduna-Abuja route as locomotives packed up midway – not just frustrating the passengers’ travel plans but also exposing them to safety hazards. On Friday, 20th November, a train broke down some distance from Abuja after taking off from Kaduna, with a video recording showing passengers off-board for fresh air while the fault was being fixed. A journey that was to last two hours took some four hours. Reports cited Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) Managing Director Fidet Okhiria blaming the incident on a failed locomotive’s turbocharger, assuring that efforts were underway to prevent such incident recurring.
But contrary to promise, the incident did recur, and in no distant time to boot. Barely five days after, there was another breakdown on the Kaduna-Abuja route leaving passengers stranded, this time in the middle the jungle and far from settlements. The notorious hazard of kidnappers’ strikes in that axis was a threatening overhang. Video records showed passengers in the coaches protesting the incident and accusing NRC of operating faulty locomotives, thereby exposing them to danger, while train attendants tried to pacify the protesters.
New locomotives were only in recent history procured by the Federal Government from China to cater to growing number of rail passengers, but barely five months after being deployed they’ve broken down severally. Following the earlier incident, Transportation Minister Rotimi Amaechi described the breakdowns as embarrassing and apologised to Nigerians, saying he had directed the Chinese contractor, CCECC, to fix or replace the locomotives as they were still under warranty. “I would like to apologise to Nigerians over what’s happening at Abuja to Kaduna line. It’s worrisome in the sense that they are brand new locomotives. We may be forced to bring back our old locomotives if the breakdowns persist. The locomotives are under warranty. We have called the Chinese to come for the locomotives that are bad, we told NRC to either fix them or get the Chinese to fix them. And if that is happening, then they should bring back the old locomotives,” he stated.
Anyone old enough to recall the dying pangs of the old Railways can’t help some déjà vu about the new breakdowns, and with acute alarm that they’re coming so early in the renaissance. The old Railways literally wasted out through locomotives packing up on the tracks. Meanwhile, the present revival involved huge mortgage of Nigeria’s future, including the controversial $500million loan from the Export-Import Bank of China. It will be a most damning verdict by history if that mortgaged future falls apart so soon on the tracks.
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