Derailment: Abuja-Kaduna railway corridor may remain shut for one month, says Opeifa

Derailment: Abuja-Kaduna railway corridor may remain shut for one month, says Opeifa 

 

Managing Director of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, Kayode Opeifa, says it may take about a month to reopen Abuja-Kaduna rail line closed on Tuesday after a major derailment in which seven passengers were seriously injured.

Opeifa who stated this on Wednesday also took full responsibility for the incident.

He spoke while appearing on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief, saying the railway corridor could only be reopened for operations after a safety audit and adequate security measures put in place.

The train derailed shortly after it left Abuja at about 11am, en route to Kaduna.

Opeifa assured Nigerians that the ongoing investigation into the incident would be thorough and transparent.

He said the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB) would have to declare the site open for reconstruction before the corporation would do a safety audit to determine when services on the route would be reopened.

He said, “The first thing that will happen is that the NSIB will determine when the site is open for reconstruction.

“So, from the time they tell us that it’s ready for reconstruction, I don’t see us spending more than 30 days. So it depends on when they declare the site open for reconstruction.”

He also said, “As the managing director and chief executive, I take full responsibility.

“When it comes to safety, there is no room for indifference. Once something like this happens, the chief executive must own it—and I d.”

The NRC MD said the injuries of four of the Abuja-Kaduna train passengers were serious.

Opeifa stated, “Coming to the fatality and the casualties, there was no fatality. We thank God. That was a near miss because for this kind of accident or incident, you see some level of fatality, but we thank God for this.

“And for those who were injured, four are serious, and another two or so were discharged immediately, and we will follow up on those that might still be in the hospital.

“I don’t know as of this moment, we’ll follow up. So we’ll also follow up with the remaining 618 people on the train because of the post-traumatic experience. We have the full contacts and we’ll do that.”

Opeifa commented on whether there was any suspicion around sabotage in the incident, saying, “It would be premature for me to speak on that because that will be undermining the authority that is meant to do the investigation. But I want to assure Nigerians that our tracks are safe from vandals and terrorists.

“This particular track is being monitored by the military. You can see that immediately it happened, within five, 10 minutes, the helicopter was there hovering.

“The Nigerian Air Force and the Nigerian army are all along this corridor, and I think, for the record, we’ve not had any issue of banditry, terrorism attack along that corridor.

“But you can’t wish anything away. The investigation will tell us what happened, and I wouldn’t want to comment because I’m a party to the investigation.”