Corruption on the rails

Citizen Nwanne Amadi had an urgent consignment of goods to transport to Kaduna from Abuja. He loaded a truck and headed for the Idu Railway Station. In years gone by, he would simply have driven to Kaduna with the goods. But since armed kidnappers had taken over the Abuja-Kaduna highway, he chose the rail option. […]

Citizen Nwanne Amadi had an urgent consignment of goods to transport to Kaduna from Abuja. He loaded a truck and headed for the Idu Railway Station. In years gone by, he would simply have driven to Kaduna with the goods. But since armed kidnappers had taken over the Abuja-Kaduna highway, he chose the rail option. It was to be the worst nightmare of his life.

At the station he was told that the ticket booths were not yet open. He waited for hours. Suddenly a boarding announcement was made. He rushed to the booth but was told that the tickets had been exhausted. “When did you start selling?” he asked. He could have been addressing the sandcrete wall. In panic he sought out one of the many touts littering the station. Negotiation. Eventually he paid N7,000 for a N1,500 ticket.

Boarding the train was like a camel trying to squeeze through the eye of a needle. He fought valiantly, goods in tow, and eventually found himself in one of the coaches. But he had to stand throughout the journey as all the seats had been taken.

That is the face of corruption in our dear country. Every good idea is sabotaged so that government employees can make extra money by the side. The money that goes to government coffers from ticket sales is less than 20 percent of the real takings. The iniquitous alliance of touts, railway employees and security personnel is alive and well. It is as if we can never run anything well.

During my last UK trip, I bought all my bus and train tickets online. I didn’t need any human interface. I simply printed out my ticket and bingo, it was a smooth ride throughout. In Nigeria, we organise everything around civil servants who are anything but civil; we set up situations of programmed confusion so that fraud may thrive. A straightforward matter like purchasing a train ticket is now made to look like nuclear science.

Some months ago, Senator Ali Ndume raised the issue on the floor of the Senate. He said he was forced to stand for two hours on the train as he journeyed from Abuja to Kaduna. He said he was given the ‘standing ticket’ because the First Class and Regular tickets were finished. He wondered why such barefaced racketeering was being condoned by government. The Senate thereafter urged the federal government to deploy more coaches to the Abuja Kaduna Rail Line and to carry out a study to review the fare structure in relation to cost.

There is no sense in running a railway service at a loss and in such a survival-of-the-fittest manner. The business is better handled by the private sector. In my estimation, the Abuja-Kaduna line could do with 15 coaches for humans and cargo, but one of the things we seem to have perfected is under-provision which, of course, enthrones racketeering. Anyone who has ever boarded a train in Nairobi or Casablanca would think we are stranded in the separate century.

As could be expected, scam artists have established their own website for ticket purchase to separate innocent commuters from their money. When the government fails to make provision for online purchase, aren’t the authorities vicariously liable for the activities of online scammers selling fake tickets? Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) had to warn passengers against buying tickets for Abuja-Kaduna route online saying any online ticket sales outlet is fraudulent and not from the corporation. NRC said passengers could buy their tickets only from NRC-designated ticket offices across the country.

Typical government-speak. Incompetence romancing racketeering. Programmed confusion window-dressed as working system — just another avenue for adding to the misery of Nigerian commuters.

Mercifully, the EFCC has made some attempts to stem the tide with the arrest of some staff of the NRC, and their police and security guard collaborators. Gladdening as that is, we can do better by shutting the kernel of corruption instead of running after wild dogs on the loose.

What to do? The first thing, obviously, is to increase the number of coaches on the Abuja-Kaduna route.

Then, an immediate upward review of the fares would ensure that government is not unnecessarily subsidising a service that could have paid its own way if properly run. There is no reason, for example, why a first class ticket can’t go for N10,000 instead of the current N2,500. Those who want that luxurious service can afford to pay. Right now, some of them are paying N15,000 for a chance to stand throughout the journey.

Government should hand over the running of the system to private concerns. That way, the incidence of delayed departures and the many scams that underpin the present system would be eliminated.

In the mean time, how about having EFCC operatives permanently stationed at the CCTV control rooms to monitor the ticketing booths and the activities of touts. The reduction of the beautiful railway station to another garage of confusion must be one of the many embarrassing desecrations we can do without.

We ran a credible railway system in the colonial era up until the military shot their way to power. Now we are re-learning the baby steps of running an efficient transport service all over again. The situation is so bad that many 40-year olds are riding a train for the first time in their lives. Talk of regression!

Transport Minister Rotimi Amaechi should grab the monster of racketeering by the jugular and put it to sleep once and for all.