The Nigerian Railway Corporation, NRC, has dismissed reports that about 970 passengers were on board the Abuja-Kaduna AK-9 train that was attacked by bandits.
The NRC said only about 398 persons bought tickets to board the train.
This was made known in a statement on Thursday, by the NRC Managing Director, Fidet Okhiria, where he threw more light on the incident.
“The Nigerian Railway Corporation, NRC, deeply commiserates with all the passengers on board the NRC AK9 train of 28th March 2022, their relatives and friends, the government and people of Kaduna state and the Federal Capital Territory as well as the entire nation. In particular, we regret the death of 8 of our passengers and security personnel attached to the train service as well as the injury suffered by scores of our passengers, not mentioning the trauma caused them and crew by the armed attack.
“We also earnestly pray for the speedy recovery of the injured passengers while praying God grants the families of the bereaved fortitude to bear the loss.
“Our attention has however been drawn to the misleading and insensitive information circulating on social media with respect to the number of passengers on the train.
“The Abuja – Kaduna service is run on a fully automated e-ticket system with entry and exit turnstiles that validate every passenger on board our trains. Ticket checkers also validate the tickets of every passenger via electronic validators linked to the central system to verify the integrity of our manifest.
“398 passengers purchased tickets to travel on the NRC AK9 service, and 362 passengers actually boarded the AK9 service.
“The entire seat capacity of the train in question is 840; therefore, the figure of 970 being circulated can not be correct”.
According NRC Boss, Passengers on board the AK9 service on Monday confirmed that the train was certainly not run at full capacity.
She called on media practitioners to be conscious of the information they feed the general public with and desist from spreading false information.
