The Minister of Transportation has asked Secure ID, a private firm handling the Abuja-Kadu e-ticketing, to take over ticket and passengers’ identification from the Nigerian Railway Corporation.
The minister gave the directive following the huge revenue losses suffered by the government as a result of ticket racketeering.
Amaechi disclosed this during the presentation of the Full Business Case Certificates (FBC) for the Lagos-Ibadan and Itakpe-Warri E-Ticketing service by the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) in Abuja.
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The minister said the e-ticketing for the Abuja-Kaduna rail service has curbed revenue losses, adding that revenue has increased from the N100m to N400m monthly.
Amaechi said, “The benefits of the E-Ticketing is that we rose from N100m to N400m per month, which is an improvement. We have been able to do something that will eliminate leakages.
“The one I think I may disagree with the public is the issue of ticket racketeering, I have spoken with the person in charge of the Abuja-Kaduna e-ticket platform to take over the identification process from NRC.
“Because what the National Assembly told me is that the NRC doesn’t cross-check the identification of passengers on the tickets. They wanted to do it, but they have not gotten approval from the NRC.
“So, I have told NRC to allow them to do it so that we match faces with the names, it’s not all about crime alone but is also security, so we release it to those security outlets.
“Even though we cannot eliminate 100 per cent crime and corruption, it will reduce the danger of having to run into security crises.
“So, we know that what we are battling with is not a crisis in our terminals, but on the way and I believe that that also will be sorted out as we go to the cabinet for approval of the security gadgets.”