Things may soon start looking up for the 116-year-old Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), following a visit by members of the Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Land Transportation. The lawmakers promised to ensure that more money is given to the corporation for its ongoing transformation, writes ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE
FOR the immediate past Managing Director of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), Adeseyi Sijuwade, the visit of members of the Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Land Transportation was his last official assignment at the 116-year-old corporation.
Until he lost his job last Tuesday, Sijuwade enjoyed the confidence of the executive and the legislature in driving the change at NRC. After a tour of the corporation, the lawmakers promised to push for more funds for the corporation to sustain its ongoing transformation.
The Senate panel Chairman, Olugbenga Ashafa faulted the N4.5 billion earmarked for the NRC in the 2016 budget, describing it as “grossly inadequate”to meet the immediate needs of the sector.
Ashafa said: “What can that amount do in one year, for a corporation with an overhead of N399 million? This is because the bulk of that sum is tailored towards personnel cost. For the record, NRC has a total of 9,700 employees.’’
His House of Representatives counterpart, Aminu Isa, pledged the NRC’s achievements, assuring the corporation of the House’s readiness in making funds available for its capital projects.
He said: “This corporation if given the chance, will do better. We as honourable members intend to intervene and see how we can greatly assist the NRC in this 2016 budget. I hope the corporation will be able to take us to the level where South Africa and Ethiopia are with their railway systems.”
Away from the past
Sijuwade pioneered the golden era of the corporation, galvanising change and bringing back on track a sub-sector which had been comatose for decades.
Detailing the successes of the corporation in the past seven years, Sijuwade said the NRC operated mass transit trains, intercity passenger trains, cargo trains, excursion and specialised charter trains across the country.
This is beside the proposed movement of petroleum products from Lagos to the North to strengthen railway relevance to economic growth, a development that would start anytime soon.
For him, the railway is not only back on track, it is on its way to achieving greater feat and becoming the hub of government’s mass transit initiative.
Faced with paucity of funds, indigenous engineers had innovated the production and fabrication of critical parts that has kept the rolling stocks on track.
Sijuwade said over 300 coaches and 200 locomotives have been rehabilitated locally in the corporation’s bid to increase the fleet on its stock and ensure the coverage of more grounds.
The icing on the Sijuwade years was the installation of Safe Train Control (STC) Centre, where all the trains on the NRC network could be monitored, controlled and directed, though computerised monitors.
Expatiating on the STC, NRC’s Director of Operations (DoP), Mr. Niyi Ali, lamented that the project, a novelty, is 50 per cent completed and the optimisation of its benefits to the tracking, control and signalling operation of the corporation is being impeded by lack of funds.
The STC implementation, which began last year, is, according to him, a modern railway signalling system which allows the corporation to monitor real-time movements of trains on the tracks, with the aid of the On Board Computers (OBC) installed on its locomotives.
“With the STC, safety of our rolling stocks and passengers are greatly enhanced because we do not only have the opportunity to see all our trains as they move within all our networks, anywhere in the country, we can also control all our drivers, via the OBC and we can even stop a locomotive with the touch of a button if we see its driver is having difficulty bringing it under control.”
A trial implementation of the project, he added, began last year.
“The problem we have is funding. The contractor has not been paid for over a year. This is one of the projects being funded by SURE-P and since its demise, the project has slowed down. A lot of equipment has already been shipped in,” Ali said.
The challenges ahead
With the Sijuwade administration closed, it is the lot of Mr. Fidet Okhiria, his successor, to continue the march and sustain the tempo of the ongoing transformation.
Okhiria, an engineer, is not on a strange turf as he was hitherto the Director Mechanical, Electrical, Signals and Communications of the corporation.
The difference is that Okhiria, rather than obeying orders now, calls the shots.
His major assignment would be to continue to galvanise the workforce and prime them to sustain the change. He is also to deepen the commitment to innovate and invent in the area of raising local content in rail maintenance.
But, perhaps, his greatest challenge would be taking delivery of the standard gauge and speed train dream of the administration.
Okhiria would be charged with charting the strategies aimed at synchronising all the land modes for effective and seamless interconnectedness a necessity in the mass transit initiative of the Buhari administration.
The new helmsman would be faced with the challenge of raising the workforce of about 10,000, and managing same effectively.
The NRC’s workforce might increase exponentially if the government’s ongoing transformation in the railway matures.
The Minister said the Abuja-Kaduna standard gauge line would generate over 250,000 jobs.
Okhiria would have to be extra sensitive to avoid darts that might be thrown on his path by those who were driven by nothing other than political consideration to sabotage his focus and mandate. The new helmsman as a career officer may well be aware that the forces that had ensured that the NRC remained prostrate are still well and kicking.
How he put the opposition that would rage against his administration of the corporation would determine how long he would survive on board.
-thenationonlineng