4th April, 2022
By Lucy Ogalue
The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) said 146 of the 362 passengers on the ill-fated Abuja-Kaduna train have been unreachable since last week Tuesday.
Mr Fidet Okhiria, the Managing Director of the NRC revealed this Sunday, while confirming contact with 14 more passengers.
The confirmed safe passengers have risen to 186.
Only 22 persons have been reported missing by their relatives and eight persons confirmed dead.
But the large number of passengers that are unreachable has given rise to fears that they may have been abducted by the terrorists.
“51 phone numbers on the manifest are either switched off or have not been reachable since Tuesday morning and 35 phone numbers on the manifest are ringing, but no response from the other end”, Okhiria said.
He said 60 phone numbers on the manifest when called, responded non-existent.
”The statement is aimed at updating Nigerians on the on-going development regarding the clearing of the incident site (recovery of the rolling stock, repairs of the track) and status of Passengers that were on-board the AK9 train of Monday, March 28.
”Of the 362 validated passengers on board the attacked AK9 train service on March 28, 186 persons on the manifest are confirmed to be safe and at their various homes (additional 14 persons confirmed safe today),” Okhiria said.
Two coaches (SP 00016 and SP 00017) earlier re-railed have safely been moved to Rigasa Station.
”This brings the total number of recovered Coaches and safely moved to NRC Stations to be seven. Intensive work continues on track repairs. More concrete Sleepers were moved to site while some section of twisted tracks has been straightened.
”We remain grateful to the security agencies for all the support. We are very appreciative of Squadron Commander MOPOL 1 Kaduna’s visit to the accident site today.
”NRC will continue to update the general public of developments to prevent misleading information and falsehood,” he added.
NAN