The management of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) says the narrow-gauge track of the corporation is alive and active.
Mr. Yakub Mahmood, the Deputy Director of Public Relations, NRC, said this in a statement on Friday in Lagos.
Mahmood said the NRC disagreed with a publication in a newspaper that implied the narrow gauge was dead.”.
He said the narrow gauge known as the western and eastern line, which crisscrosses from Lagos to Kano and Port Harcourt to Maiduguri, was undergoing rehabilitation.
“On the western line, we have trains operating from Apapa and Iddo to Ijoko still running the Mass Transit Train Service every day of the week and is highly patronized by our esteemed passengers.
“We also freight containers from Apapa port and cement from Ewekoro to Ibadan and Oshogbo. This is in addition to the special passenger train chartered by the state government during the festive period on the same narrow gauge corridor.
“We have the Port Harcourt to Aba Mass Transit Train that operates daily except on Mondays,” he said.
He noted that the narrow gauge had never been out of train operations.
“The narrow gauge is certainly alive and active, and we are still running our trains on it in various parts of the country,” he said.
He said the federal government was committed to the revitalization of the entire nation’s railway assets.
He said the federal government would continue to ensure the modernization of railways through the construction of standards and the rehabilitation of narrow gauge lines across the country.
“The management, therefore, wishes to inform the general public that the railway is still alive and actively in operation on both standard and narrow gauges,” he said. (NAN)
