TheCable

The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) generated N5.79 billion as revenue from passengers and cargo between 2019 and the first quarter of 2021 (Q1 2021).

This is according to the latest report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), titled: “Rail Transportation Data (Q1 2019 – Q1 2021)”.

According to the report, revenue generated from passengers within the period of review was N5.05 billion, while revenue generated from goods/cargo was N670.42 million, income from other receipts stood at N77.8million

A breakdown of the data shows that the highest revenue generated from passengers was recorded in Q1 2021 with N892.47 million, while the lowest revenue generation from passengers was recorded in the second quarter of 2020 (Q2 2020) with N320.34 million.

Meanwhile, the second quarter of 2019 (Q2 2019) generated the highest revenue from the volume of goods/services transported via train with N131.27 million, while the lowest revenue generation from goods was recorded in the last quarter of 2019 with N17.60 million.

Among all categories in the report, the year 2020 (particularly Q2 2020) suffered the most losses and turnout of passengers due to the COVID-19 lockdown imposed by the federal government in an effort to curtail the spread of the virus across Nigeria.

A total number of 4.33 million passengers travelled via the rail system between 2019 and Q1 2021, while 298,063 tons of volume of goods/cargo travelled via train within the same period.