Railway vandals may face death penalty, says Amaechi

 

The Federal Government is considering capital punishment for railway track vandals in the country, Minister of Transportation, Mr Rotimi Amaechi, has said.

He stated on Monday in Abuja at a town hall meeting on ‘Protecting Public Infrastructure’.

The meeting organised by the Ministry of Information was attended by community chiefs, security personnel and various stakeholders.

According to Amaechi, rail track vandalism is a capital offence and its consequences should be treated as such.

He said, “I am not quantifying the material cost; what I am quantifying is the lives that will be lost. Imagine that a driver of a rail track is driving and suddenly bumps into a track that has been severed; what happens? It will derail.

“Each coach in Nigeria carries about 85 passengers; sometimes we carry 14 coaches; sometimes 20. So imagine you are carrying a train of 14 or 20 coaches with 85 passengers in each coach, if it derails, can you quantify how many passengers that would die in the course of one man thinking he is making money.

“So, it is not about the cost but the lives that would have been lost because of few people’s interest.

“Some people have recommended that since these people are killing people, if accident happens, people will die, so we should go back to the National Assembly and pass a law that does not only criminalise the action but its consequences should be death.”

The minister noted that if armed robbery, whether successful or not attracted life imprisonment, rail track vanderlism should not be any less punitive.

According to him, the track vanderlism is being done in collaboration with foreign partners.

Amaechi said, “In Jos, they arrested a Chinese company that bought those track materials from them, went to court and court found them guilty and fined them N200,000. So there must be consequences as N200,000 is not enough.”

He commended residents along the Lagos-Ibadan rail track as no incident of vanderlism had been recorded along the route.

He said, “Lagos and the Western District recorded one; North Weste 31; Northern District 10; North East 43; Eastern District 36 and North Central, 50 incidents of vanderlism. Abuja-Kaduna has 13; Warri-Itakpe, two and Lagos-Ibadan, nil.”

He said the ministry and the Nigerian Railway Corporation were working at reducing the rate of vanderlism but a lot still needed to be done.

The minister frowned on the rate at which the tracks was being converted to shops and restaurants, especially in Port Harcourt and Lagos and warned such offenders to desist or be ready to face the penalties.

“The solution is put them in jail; all you need to do is pass a law, put them in jail. I’m sure if you take 15 to 30 people to court and are found guilty, you put them in jail; it will deter others.

The Managing Director, NRC, Mr Fidet Okhiria, also reiterated the need to penalise rail track vandals in the country to serve as deterrent to other people.

He said, “It is dangerous; it can lead to death of people, delays operation and it is cost-effective.

“Due to the vanderlism, we have to send a monitoring train before we send a train, it costs money running in this condition. And in some areas, we are not able to run a train.

“What we are trying to do is to sensitise; let the communities know that government’s property is their own. Know that if you vanderlise the track, you don’t know who will be affected.

“Technology is not cheap and any punishment that will deter these offenders I will support it.”