UPDATED: Dashed Hopes For Train Passengers As Poor Server Aborts Trip

Train Passengers scheduled for the 9:45 am flight on Monday will either return home or resort to road transportation after a poor network halted the ticketing process.

THE WHISTLER monitored the ticketing process on Monday at the Idu Train Station, after the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) Regional Manager, Paschal Nnoli told this paper train services would be rescheduled forward by 30mins.

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At the ticketing office, our correspondent sighted more passengers with minors, although the turnout was poor.

Passengers at the Idu Train Station purchase their tickets. THE WHISTLER captured moments when the mother of six minors, wearing an off-white Hijab, standing behind a man in a white and black check shirt, was waiting to purchase her ticket at 9 am, December 12, 2022.

Some of the passengers, scheduled for 9:45 am, who could not get a ticket to Kaduna told THE WHISTLER they had arrived earlier for the process but the intermittent failure of the server left them with no choice but to take the road.

A passenger with six other minors had arrived by 8:45 am but could not get on the train.

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She said, “I was here around 8:45 am, and I was here to get the ticket, me and my children. They just said they should stop selling tickets by 9 am, and I don’t know why. I have six minors with me, and we can’t for the 3 pm train so we are going by road”.

Another male passenger who booked his ticket on the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) Application was sighted confronting officials of the IDU Train Station while holding his luggage.

A train passenger wearing a white Jalabiya told THE WHISTLER he and his brother purchased tickets online and have been at the station since 7 am on December 12, 2022.

This paper learnt that he and his brother had arrived at the Idu train station at 7 am.

He said, “How can one buy tickets for N10,000 and then you tell him to buy another ticket? We were told that the machine scanner was not working, and we could not scan our ticket, and now we have missed our trip.”

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Meanwhile, this paper learnt that the VIP tickets have increased by about N1,000, taking the price to N6500 at the ticket stand, and a regular ticket is sold at N3600 as of December 12.

One of the passengers who could not make it to the 9:45 am trip was Onyekachi Adekoya, the General Manager of PR24, a security and risk management firm. He told this paper that the situation was “gross incompetence”, and one that “occurs infrequently”.

The security analyst who noted that the speed server was slow believed that the plug between the NRC and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) server could not take the traffic of passengers required to be verified.

NRC Staff at the Idu Train Station’s Ticketing office while making efforts to verify a passenger’s National Identification Number (NIN), but the poor server kept frustrating the process.

He added, “The time of processing the passenger’s NIN is equally an issue, but we expect that in a couple of weeks, they will sort themselves out”.

Recall that the NRC upon resumption on December 5, said no passengers would board the train without proper verification.

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The NRC disclosed that passengers would only purchase their tickets provided they use their National Identification Number (NIN) for security measures.

Train service operation between Abuja and Kaduna commenced on December 5 after over eight months of suspension.

The last inbound Kaduna -Abuja train was attacked on March 28 by a terrorist group. The attackers detonated an explosive on the rail track and sporadically shot the coaches.

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