Anthony Iwuoma
More than one week after, the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has not been to establish contact with 163 passengers and seven crew members of the ill-fated Abuja-Kaduna train that was attacked by terrorists last week.
The Managing Director of NRC, Fidel Okhiria, in the corporation’s sixth update on the attack, explained that 191 passengers had been confirmed safe and reunited with their families.
He said: “46 phone numbers on the manifest are still either switched off or not reachable since Tuesday morning. 33 phone numbers on the manifest are ringing but still no response from the other end.”
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He added that 62 phone numbers on the manifest when called responded non-existent.
Meanwhile, 22 persons are reported missing by their relatives, with eight persons confirmed dead.
The NRC boss stated that there were 20 train crew members on board, of whom seven are NRC staff; five of them are okay while two are missing.
He further disclosed that of the 10 janitors, six are okay, three missing and one dead.
However, of the three onboard caterers, one is okay and two are missing.
Okhiria explained that one of the coaches was safely re-railed to Rigasa station, making the total number of recovered coaches moved to the NRC stations to eight.
He assured that work was ongoing to get the rail line back to operations, as
track repair works are being intensified on-site to enable the recovery of the remaining coaches and locomotives.
