NRC To Begin Sunday Service On Lagos/Ibadan In Two Weeks-MD

The Managing Director, Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) Mr Fidet Okhiria says the corporation has concluded plans to include Sunday into the Lagos/Ibadan Standard gauge railway service to satisfy customers’ needs.
Okhiria made the disclosure during a two-day retreat for senior management in the corporation held at the Headquarters in Lagos on Thursday.
“We are working to include Sunday service in our operations. In the next two weeks, Sunday service will commence but we need to service the rolling stock fully before programming the train for seven days operation.
“We want Nigerians to really enjoy the train service, if not for the servicing, the Sunday service will have commenced this Sunday June 27.
“We are also using few days to programme staff for night operations because we want people to benefit from the train services.
“The objective of the management staff meeting is to review and inform them on the way forward.
“Before now we have given ourselves some goals to achieve like how many locomotives, how many speed limit we should remove and how many trains we should have running,” Okhiria said.
He said the management meeting usually held quarterly, adding that the management had decided to include five new locomotives but they had been able to get three.
Okhiria said the two outstanding locomotives were awaiting spare parts to arrive and that they had speed restrictions at different locations.
He said some speed limits had been removed while new ones had also been developed, adding that the management was planning on when to remove the speed restrictions.
Okhiria said there were five speed restrictions on Abuja/ Kaduna Standard gauge railway routes, adding that two speed restrictions had been removed on that axis due to some ballast formation.
He said they had to put speed restrictions on Apapa track due to frequent derail because of lack of ballast.
The NRC boss said after listening to various security challenges along railway corridors, that they had directed the district managers and directors to collaborate with the Nigeria Police and Civil Defense to improve the response time.
Okhiria, however, urged management to convey all the corporation’s expectations to the staff in their various stations and also improve on staff motivation for quality and