The Managing Director of the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) Mr. Fidet Okhiria, has discredited reports of terrorists attack on its train transiting the Abuja-Kaduna rail corridor.
According to Okhiria, who spoke with Daily Trust, the train was indeed destroyed, but the attack was attributed to suspected vandals .
He added that that an investigation was underway to determine the root-cause of the problem.
“It’s true our rail track was damaged,” he said, adding that he couldn’t confirm if its a terrorist attack.
He said the track was destroyed by suspected vandals as vandalism of the NRC facilities have been on the increase in recent times.
“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.
“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” he further explained.
Okhiria assured that the coporation was working assiduously to improve security on the corridor.
Chronicle NG had earlier reported that a former Kaduna Central Senator, Shehu Sani escaped death on Thursday after his train was attacked by terrorists.
Sani revealed that the Kaduna-Abuja train in which he was traveling, ran into a segment of the tracks destroyed intentionally by terrorists on Wednesday.
According to the former lawmaker, the assailants opened fire on the engine driver and tank of the train.
Sani disclosed this in a tweet on Thursday.
“Yesterday, terrorists attacked the Kaduna-Abuja railway with an explosive and opened fire on the train, targeting the engine driver and the tank.
“This morning, I was on board when our train ran over another explosive damaged rail track. It took a miracle for us to escape,” Sani tweeted.
