https://guardian.ng/news/rail-passenger-accuses-nrc-staff-of-ticket-racketeering/
These are not the best of times for the NRC. They’ve had a lot of attention since the recent indictments of some of its senior executives and also for some of the poor services they provide.
Abuja-Kaduna has lost its allure. Once upon a time it was the preferred modal choice for travel between Abuja and Kaduna but not any more. Not after the terrorist hijack of 2022 and many mishaps later.
Lagos – Ibadan is still reportedly fine but for how long? Ujevwu – Itakpe is now a story of broken dreams and Port Harcourt – Aba is better than nothing with the occasional mishap allegedly. Bukuru – Jos is still going but for how long too?.
NRC’s qualitative problem has been about sustainability. A service is inaugurated to much aplomb but no sooner degenerates in quality. Quantitatively is an age old struggle to maintain the number of trains in a service. This though is a function of its business model as it doesn’t generate enough revenue to invest as all it earns goes towards recurrent expenditure to complement its federal allocation. The FG has determined that the railway is social infrastructure but the challenge is that it is unable to fund it adequately. So it’s impact on the logistics chain is negligible at less than 1% market share of transportation. In 2025, it received no allocation for its capital budget so it bought no new trains nor rehabilitated more tracks. It struggles to maintain its existing assets and this is why the news of alleged corruption among staff rankles a lot.
The ticket racketeering allegations however just won’t go away much as they try to shake them off. They have dogged the NRC since the commencement of the Lagos MTTS between Iddo and Alagbado from around 2011. At a time, we assessed that racketeering on Abuja- Kaduna alone was as much as N3bn per annum and then along came e-ticketing as a game changer but the touts seemed to adapt their operations to the changed environment.
The NRC is known to have disciplined some errant staff that were caught in the rackets but none is known to have ever been handed to the police or EFCC. As the activity is tantamount to theft of public property and is criminal in nature, you’ll be forgiven for wondering why not and thinking that the more things change, the more they stay the same.