The Nigerian Railway Corporation has said it will suspend rail services for three days to enable voters exercise their franchise in the presidential and National Assembly elections scheduled to hold on Saturday.
Train services to be put on hold are Abuja-Kaduna, Warri-Itakpe, Lagos-Ibadan and Iddo, Lagos-Ijoko interstate mass transit service.
Spokesperson of NRC, Mr Mahmood Yakubu, in a statement, said the suspension is from Saturday, February 25 to Monday, February 27
The statement indicated that normal schedules and services will resume on Tuesday, February 28.
In another development, Minister of Transportation, Mu’azu Sambo has called for the unbundling of the Corporation to enable it operate optimally.
Director of Press and Public Relations in the ministry, Henshaw Ogubike, in a statement, quoted the minister to have stated this while addressing the management team of the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI), led by the CEO, Dr Armstrong Takang, who were on a visit to him.
The minister charged MOFI to drive the unbundling of the NRC to make it more economically viable while offering world-class services to Nigerians, noting that reforms implemented in the ports and the benefits these have brought, should be carried out in the railway sector.
The minister who assuaged the fear of job loss as a result of the unbundling said, “ I don’t want the NRC staff to see the unbundling of the NRC as a threat to their jobs. If we have a better-performing NRC, then we are going to have better salaries for its workers, better working conditions for its workers, more revenue for the FG and therefore the ability to even build more rail networks.
