The Joint National Assembly Committee on Land Transport yesterday begged the Chinese Government to help rescue 62 passengers abducted from the Abuja-Kaduna-bound passengers train on the 28th March 2022 by suspected terrorists.
Addressing newsmen after an oversight visit to the Obafemi Awolowo train station in Ibadan, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Land Transport, Senator Abdulafatai Buhari said that it is embarrassing that 47 days after some passengers were kidnapped from the Abuja-Kaduna-bound passenger train, they are yet to be rescued.
According to Senator Buhari, Today makes it exactly 47 days that some Nigerians were abducted from the passenger train, yet nothing has been done to rescue them. Yesterday, some of the families of the abducted passengers met with the Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufa’i, and the accusation was that we the lawmakers are not doing anything about rescuing their relatives in captivity.
What effort is the Chinese Government putting in place to assist the Nigerian Government in rescuing these people?”, he queried.
“The Chinese Government makes money from the many rail projects that are being handled by the China Civil Engineering Construction Company (CCECC) here in Nigeria; so asking them to help us is not out of place.
“Nigerians are no longer ready to listen to the number of passengers that have been carried by the trains since they were commissioned. Nigerians are not interested in what has been put in the various stations by the CCECC. What we want to hear now is the effort being put into rescuing those people in captivity.
If a Chinese national was among those people abducted, we know that the Chinese Government would have come to rescue him”, he stated.
When asked if his call that the Chinese Government intervene in the rescue of the 62 kidnapped passengers is a loss of confidence in Nigerias effort in rescuing them, Senator Buhari stated that Nigeria cannot be compared with China when it comes to technology deployment.
Also speaking during the oversight inspection, the Deputy Managing Director of CCECC, Xia Lijun, urged the Joint National Assembly Committee to look into power supply issues and access road issues affecting most of the train stations.
Also speaking, the Managing Director of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), Engineer Fidet Okhiria who was represented by a Director in the agency said that the Corporation is increasing technology to restore confidence in the trains.
We are deploying technology and it is only then when we are sure that we would open up the line”, he stated.
