Federal Government is currently under pressure to increase coaches for effectively run train services on the Abuja-Kano axis of passenger train services, Rotimi Amaechi, the minister of transportation, has disclosed.
Amaechi gave the hint while reacting to question of high cost of the newly introduced train fare on the Lagos-Ibadan train services, saying those who find the fares high can explore other transport options for traveling to Ibadan.
“When there was no train there was road. There are three forms of transportation from Lagos to Ibadan, there is flight, please use flight if you can, you can come by road which you said is cheaper, or you come by train’’.
“As we are talking today, we are under pressure to increase coaches to get more coaches to Kaduna-Abuja. The pressure is heavy. They broke our social distancing rules, that those seats that we kept to create social distancing, we started using them such that passengers had to take a position that I must go and announce that they must maintain social distancing with face masks or we shut down the train, because we are again overrun by the number of passengers. Do not worry when we start we will be overrun by passengers here” he said.
The minister recalled that the Abuja-Kaduna trains services started with only 100 passengers and started growing until its current 4000 daily passengers traffic, expressing hope that the Lagos-Ibadan will also grow rapidly.
