On the Abuja-Kaduna rail

The Idu Train Station is an architectural showpiece that is better than MMA ever was. Geographically, it is currently outside of the Abuja maelstrom, and has yet to be discovered by touts. It was an unusual sight to see the maintenance staff wiping dust o

Two weeks ago, I rode the AbujaKaduna rail service. As a long-time observer of Nigeria’s public life, I have often commented on the poor state of the nation’s infrastructure. The new Abuja-Kaduna rail, perhaps the nation’s only functioning current passenger rail line, is a thing of beauty, and despite my poor health at the time, I rode it with great pride.

The service was inaugurated in July 2017 by President Muhammadu Buhari, who took a widely-publicized first ride.

Following the delivery of a few more coaches late in the year, the current service of four daily services (each way), and two on Sundays, was put into effect last month. I took one of those daily services, which costs N1050 for a Standard Class ticket. The service also has two Business Class coaches out of Abuja’s Idu Station, one of which is reserved for passengers from the city’s suburban town of Kubwa, the train’s first stop.

The Idu train station is an excellent piece of work, from its design through construction to maintenance. It reminded me of Murtala Muhammad Airport in its heydays in the early 1980s, when there was electricity and air-conditioning and parking and order. When the restrooms and elevators and luggage carousels worked. When there was Nigeria Airways but no touts. When Immigration and Customs Officers were professional and didn’t brazenly ask you for money or “help.”

But one must keep in mind that the place has only just opened. Nonetheless, the Idu Train Station is an architectural showpiece that is better than MMA ever was. Geographically, it is currently outside of the Abuja maelstrom, and has yet to be discovered by touts. It was an unusual sight to see the maintenance staff wiping dust off pillars and fittings, as if someone has decreed that the edifice be perpetually kept in its pristine condition. Even the taxis at the station are tightly-controlled: I was pleasantly surprised to find licensed taxis, their drivers wearing clearly-displayed identification tags around their necks. It is a model that managers of our airports ought to learn from.

At the Kaduna end, the Rigasa Station is clearly a downgrade, a lower version of the magnificence of the Idu Station, as if it is intended to be just another stop on the (Iddo) Lagos-Kano vision. Indeed, the trains all read Iddo-Kano. But Kaduna is a major hub on that journey, and I could not understand why the station lacks such basics as air-conditioning, a restaurant and more rest rooms.

The trains are in resplendent condition. The conductors and engineers are knowledgeable and friendly, but the cleaning staff need more training, and they ought to be forbidden from spreading their cleaning supplies and dirty rags in the trains’ very tight bathrooms.

It has taken over 10 years and several governments at the centre to complete the 185-kilometre Abuja-Kaduna segment of the famous Lagos-Kano train service. Hopefully, the other train projects, will not take so long. The pivotal Lagos-Calabar rail is already into its fourth year, and it is unclear that anything has been done.

Next, of course, is the subject of maintenance. In 10 years, for instance, will the Abuja-Kaduna rail be anywhere near its current quality? In fact, by this time next year, how many of the toilets on the trains would be functioning?

If you pay attention to related developments, you might know that the Abuja Light Rail is expected to take off shortly; it was supposed to have started running no later than December 2017. When it does, one of its 12 stations will be at Idu, meaning that the Abuja Rail will not only feed into the Abuja-Kaduna service, but also into the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, thus changing the nature of travel in the area. It will be the biggest test of our infamous inability to maintain facilities since the collapse of Nigeria Airways.

You probably do not know it, but in September last year, there was an interesting Nigeria story of a train breakdown: the Abuja-Kaduna train commissioned only two months earlier by President Buhari.

The breakdown occurred on the morning of September 25 in Jere, 70 kilometres from Abuja, and the third stop from Idu.

The strange incident occurred just two months after the commissioning. At the time, armed robbers and kidnappers were undertaking brisk business in the Jere area.

Among others, in March 2017 on the Jere-Bwari Road-which is the alternate route between Abuja and Kaduna-armed men seized two persons, including a brother of Lawal Adamu, an aide of Senator Shehu Sani (Kaduna Central Constituency). In May, Garba Durbunde, a member of the House of Representatives, was kidnapped on the same highway.

Actually, the Jere train breakdown should not have been such a surprise: it was the second time the two-month old train was breaking down that same day. Passengers said it had almost failed to depart Abuja in the first place.

One of them said he had previously experienced a similar breakdown. “The first time we spent hours but today we only spent 20 minutes or so,” he said of the Jere incident. “Immediately it happened, what came to my mind were kidnappers.”

But it was only weeks after the service began that reports first emerged of malfunctioning facilities, and of mismanagement and overcrowding.

And then on August 11, Transportation Minister Rotimi Amaechi, to whom much of the progress in the sector is owed, stepped in. Citing ticket racketeering, passenger complaints, poor maintenance and untidy conditions, he fired 11 officials at the Idu and Rigasa stations. They included station managers, porters, and ticket officials at both stations.

Mr. Amaechi’s actions were largely unprecedented. Nigeria’s high officials, by definition, have time only to count and move money one way or another. Theirs is often not the business of managing, of ensuring that funds are properly spent, or that facilities function today as they did yesterday.

Perhaps because of the Minister’s decisiveness, I did not experience any malfeasance at the two stations I experienced, and we suffered no breakdown. But my trains, it must be borne in mind, were each less than one-month in service.

But what do you do on your first train ride in your country as it streaks through on a beautiful sunny day? You stare through the large windows at mile after mile after mile-well over 100 of them-of lush vegetation and possibilities.

And you ask yourself, with tears in your eyes, how on earth your country ever came to be described as poor, or any citizen as hungry.