By our reporter/ The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) on Thursday announced the cancellation of its service on the Abuja-Kaduna rail line after an attack on the train.
The train was reportedly attacked with explosives by gunmen on two different occasions — Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
In a message to passengers on its booking website, the NRC said it is suspending the service for the safety of travellers.
The corporation said it is working to restore the service, and will inform the public when the train starts running again.
“Due to unforeseen circumstances, train services have been immediately suspended for the safety of our dear passengers,” information on the website read.
“Efforts are in place to restore service. Further information would follow immediately, the service is restored.”
The news of the attack was first made public via a Tweet by Shehu Sani, former senator representing Kaduna central, who said it “took a miracle” for him and other passengers on the train to escape.
“Yesterday, terrorists attacked the Kaduna Abuja railway with an explosive & opened fire on the train, targeting the Engine Driver and the Tank,” he tweeted.
“This morning, I was on board when our train ran over another explosive [and it] damaged [the] rail. It took a miracle for us to escape.”
But the managing director of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), Fidet Okhiria, later on Thursday explained that vandals, not bandits, attacked a train service along the Abuja-Kaduna track.
He confirmed that parts of the train track were destroyed in the attack.
The managing director who stated this while speaking with Daily Trust, said an investigation is underway to unravel what really happened on the Abuja-Kaduna rail line on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning.
“It’s true our rail track was damaged,” the newspaper quoted the managing director to have said.
Okhiria said they are working to ensure that the service is restored by Thursday evening (today).
“So we have issues with the track and we are fixing it. We are working to resume train services and by today’s (Thursday) evening, we should run if possible,” he said.
“We operated a train from Kaduna to Abuja this morning (Thursday) but we had to suspend operations due to the damaged track until we fix it.”
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