Fidet Okhiria, Managing Director of Nigeria Railway Corporation, revealed that the Federal Government lost around N113 million owing to the non-operation of trains on the Abuja-Kaduna railway for more than eight months.
Okhiria made the remarks in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Saturday in Abuja.
He also stated that many Nigerians suffered indirect losses as a result of the route’s closure.
“The last time we checked that was between the months of February and August,” he explained. We have lost approximately N113 million.
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“Using what we were earning between Jan and March, so we had to use it as a working document.
“Although, when the train was working, there are a lot of other businesses that were going on.
“There were people selling on the train, there were people selling around the stations, and there were people that had opened shops and people were patronising them because the trains were running.
“So those were indirect benefit and cost that have been lost to the Nigerian economy.
“More so, somebody who would have travelled from Kaduna to Abuja via train for some form of transaction and couldn’t make it because the trains were not running would have also lost something.
“The economic benefits is also lost, so we should not only look at the Naira and kobo that railway would have been able to make from it, but include all other losses by Nigerians.”
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