It was an unusual post on Facebook. It is not often that Nigerians have charitable or commendable things to say about occupants of public office. They are seen more as masters rather than servant leaders; more preoccupied with the pomp and grandeur of office as wealth acquisition rather than the opportunity it provides to add value to society and promote national development. There is a linkage between deficient leadership at all levels and an otherwise richly endowed country’s continued inexplicable romance with dehumanizing underdevelopment. But on the 5th of July, 2025, Engineer S. O. Yusuf, from Kaduna, had a post online tagged ‘Leadership by Example’.
In his words, “This morning at about 7:46 a.m. inside a train from Rigasa to Idu, Abuja, I had a remarkable encounter that left a lasting impression on me about leadership in Nigeria. While seated in Coach 20 of the Nigeria Railway Corporation train, I met a humble and well-spoken gentleman who joined us on a three-seat bench. After exchanging pleasantries, he engaged me and my friend in a thoughtful conversation about Railway transportation in Nigeria, particularly our experiences along the Abuja-Kaduna route. We spoke openly, highlighting both the positive aspects and areas where we believed improvements were needed”.
Engineer Yusuf continued, “Throughout the discussion, he listened with genuine interest, asked insightful questions, and responded thoughtfully. His calm, respectful, and unassuming manner stood out. To our surprise, it was only after we introduced ourselves that we discovered he was the Managing Director of the Nigerian Railway Corporation. What struck me most was how approachable and down-to-earth he was. There was no air of superiority or entitlement. He embodied what true leadership should be, listening to honest feedback, and leading by example”. But what did Engineer Yusuf find even more fascinating? Hear him: “Upon arrival at Idu Station, he quickly got down and ensured the elevator was operational. For the first time in years of using the train, I was able to use both the elevator and the escalator; an immediate and visible impact of proactive leadership”.
Incidentally, the current Managing Director of the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC), Dr Isiak Kayode Opeifa, who was appointed by President Bola Tinubu on 22nd January, stressed on an appearance on TVC’s breakfast show that the restoration of dignified and satisfactory customer service, which he described as a constituent key soul of Railway operations, is a cardinal goal of the organization under his leadership. The correspondence shared above by an impressed customer confirms that he is indeed walking his talk. Other components of the soul of this mode of transportation, very critical to the management he leads, Opeifa avers, are affordable cost, comfort, connectivity and pride arising from the customer’s sense of fulfilment and safety.
In articulating his goal at the NRC within the context of President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, Opeifa situates one of Nigeria’s oldest public institutions at the very core of the country’s pursuit of economic growth and development, prosperity and national integration. Tracing the historical trajectory of the NRC, he notes that it had been at the centre of national economic development and integration as far back as 1898, up to 1912, even before Nigeria was formally christened with the famous name it bears today. Although he never used the then functional trains before he was born 21 May, 1965, he recalls with nostalgia tales he was told of how the train service moved people and goods from Lagos to Kafanchan, Kutuwenji, Kaura Namoda, Zungeru, Enugu, Aba, Port Harcourt and all over Nigeria. Historians surely have a duty to document for popular readership the role of the NRC over time in the emergence of a popular national consciousness.
However, Opeifa laments that the NRC was allowed by successive regimes to become one of the foremost symbols of the abysmal decline of the country’s fortunes for a period of no less than six decades. Steps to reverse this decline, he states, started about a decade ago with the late President Muhammadu Buhari administration that jump-started the actualization of modernizing the country’s rail system. There are those who can see no positive gains of the PMB years in power. But even the blind can see the various rail projects either initiated or completed by the administration in eight years of frenetic activity in the sector. These include the Kaduna-Kano railway project; the Abuja Kaduna railway route; the Port Harcourt – Aba railway rehabilitation; the Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge railway and the Kano- Daura section of the Kano- Maradi rail project to name a few.
Describing the national railway system he inherited as stable, not yet good enough but recovering, Opeifa, who holds a PhD in transport and mobility planning and logistics, is according priority to ensuring that investment of effort and revenue yield more efficient and effective outcomes. According to him, under the Renewed Hope Agenda, the focus as regards revitalization of the country’s rail system is to “optimize what we have to work for us; moving people as well as agricultural and other products; creating jobs; boosting prosperity and situating rail transportation at the centre of national development”. He explains that a cardinal but hardly noticed step that the Tinubu administration has taken in the direction of national restructuring has been to place the NRC in a prime position to promote development at the states and hinterlands by removing rail transportation from the exclusive to the concurrent list of the 1999 Constitution.
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Consequently, infrastructure development around the national rail system has been taken back to the states where the people are no longer just users of the rail facilities but are now primed to benefit from the inclusive growth the decentralization of rail transportation engenders. As part of efforts to ensure that national assets entrusted to the NRC are utilized to the benefit of all citizens, Opeifa says that the organization will soon unveil details of how all parts of the country will be integrated into the national rail grid. Contrary to the view in some quarters that the new regional development commissions are wasteful and profligate, the NRC Chief Executive notes that one of their main preoccupations is the development of integrated rail networks for their various territories, which are now being connected to macro rail grid networks.
Given the high cost of these ventures, he points out that provision has been made in the 2025 budget for financial grants to be made available to state governments willing to develop rail networks. The Tinubu administration is thus backing sub-national units of administration to develop infrastructure that belongs to them and not to the centre. While Kaduna and Niger States are collaborating on developing the Minna – Kaduna rail route, the Katsina State government is seizing the new opportunity to develop the Katsina -Kano- Maradi Jibiya- Funtua rail route. He enthuses that many state governments are eagerly working with the NRC to initiate new rail projects or reignite moribund ones. The Red Line Rail in Lagos runs on the NRC’s Lagos-Ibadan corridor, while Ogun State is taking advantage of the same corridor to develop a number of its inner city rail routes.
In collaboration with the Plateau State government, the NRC’s ‘Railing on the Plateau’ initiative has resurrected and operationalized the Jos-Bukuru-Kava rail, moving large numbers of people at far more affordable costs than possible on the road. And in Niger State, the ‘Rail on the Niger’ scheme is moving farm products from various centres in the State to markets within and beyond the state. While the Apapa Port to the standard gauge has been completed to enable movement of cargo both from the narrow and standard gauge, the route from the Apapa Port to the Tin Can Port is at an advanced stage of work. On the Eastern axis, Opeifa is understandably excited that the Port Harcourt to Aba route has been completed and commenced commercial operations, moving people to and from the two commercial nerve centres at a cost of N700.
Under the administration’s ‘Trade by Rail’ revolution, the NRC is now moving huge cargoes including cement, gypsum, soda ash and others by rail. The pipes used on the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano AKK project were moved by rail from Warri to Itakpe. The NRC under Opeifa is rehabilitating and bringing back the moribund Lagos-Kano narrow gauge, while abandoned old coaches are being rehabilitated and returned to functionality. It has completed and tested the concept plan to replace diesel use with Liquified Natural Gas for its stations and locomotives, and considerably reduce its operational costs, while all the NRC’s generators will now be powered by Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), reducing operation costs by 70 per cent. In the sixties, Chinua Achebe’s collection of essays titled ‘Morning Yet on Creation Day’ indicated what he saw as a new spirit of resurgent creativity for African literature. The same spirit is stirred in an NRC on the rebound under Opeifa.
