TheCable

The federal government has asked the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) to hand over tickets and passengers’ identification to Secure ID, the company in charge of the E-Ticketing platform for the Abuja-Kaduna rail service.

Rotimi Amaechi, minister of transportation, gave the directive on Wednesday during the presentation of the Full Business Case Certificates (FBC) for the Lagos-Ibadan and Itakpe-Warri E-Ticketing service by the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), in Abuja.

Amaechi said the introduction of the E-Ticketing platform for Abuja-Kaduna, blocked all revenue leakages and increased revenue generated by the agency from about N100 million to N400 million monthly.

“The benefits of the E-Ticketing is that we rose from N100 million to N400 million per month, which is an improvement,” he said.

“We have been able to do something that will eliminate leakages.

“The one I think I may disagree with the public is the issue of ticket racketeering, I have spoken with the person in charge of the Abuja-Kaduna e-ticket platform to take over the identification process from NRC.

“Because what the National Assembly told me is that the NRC doesn’t cross-check the identification of passengers on the tickets. They wanted to do it, but they have not gotten approval from NRC.

“So, I have told NRC to allow them to do it so that we match faces with the names, it’s not all about crime alone but is also security, so we release it to those security outlets.

“Even though we cannot eliminate 100 per cent crime and corruption, it will reduce the danger of having to run into security crises.

“So, we know that what we are battling with is not a crisis in our terminals, but on the way and I believe that that also will be sorted out as we go to the cabinet for approval of the security gadgets.”

On his part, Michael Ohiani, acting director-general, ICRC, said the concession is to bring about thousands of jobs as well as generate more revenue.

“The concession is for 10 years. It is going to generate over N140 billion to the federal government, most importantly, it will also create job opportunities for over 3000 direct and indirect jobs,” Ohiani said.

“The next phase is for the honourable minister to take it to the federal executive council for approval, and the ministry of justice will now clear it.”