The Nigerian Railway Corporation, NRC has said it is yet to establish contact with 163 passengers and seven crew members who boarded the AK9 Abuja-Kaduna train that was attacked by terrorists on March 28, 2022.
According to Fidet Okhiria, the NRC’s Managing Director, in the sixth update from the corporation, with respect to the attack on the train, 191 passengers had been confirmed safe and were in their various homes with their families.
Okhiria assured that work was ongoing to get the rail line back to operations.
According to him, “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.”
He further explained 62 phone numbers on the manifest when called responded non-existent, while 22 persons are reported missing by their relatives, with eight persons confirmed dead.
The NRC’s Managing Director stated that on the crew members in the train, there were a total of 20 train crew on board, stressing that seven (are) NRC staff, five are okay and two are missing.
He added that of the 10 janitors, six are okay, three missing and one dead, adding that of the three onboard caterers, one is okay and two are missing.
Okhiria explained that SP 00020, one of the coaches was re-railed back to Rigasa station safely.
This, according to him brings the total number of recovered coaches and safely moved to the NRC stations to eight.
He said that the intensive track repair works continued on-site to enable the recovery of the remaining coaches and locomotives.
