The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has reacted to reports on the breakdown of a Lagos-Ibadan train which stopped due to lack of fuel on Thursday.
In an interview with NAN, the managing director of NRC, Fidet Okhiria attributed the incident to a failure in fuel gauge.
He said the gauge of the train had an issue and was not reading properly which made the driver take off without realizing the train did not have enough fuel for the journey.
What the NRC is saying
Mr Okhira noted that passengers were not stranded in the middle of anywhere as was largely circulated on social media. He alleged that the issue was resolved within one hour.
- “The train gauge had an issue while the engineers thought the diesel in the train tank would take them to Lagos.
- “The train gauge was not reading correctly, so by the time they started moving, the driver discovered that there was no sufficient diesel in the train.
- “Immediately they discovered the challenge, they responded quickly and under an hour they were able to get a drum of diesel to fill the tank and continued the journey back to Lagos,” Mr Okhiria said.
In case you missed it
Nairametrics had reported that a train heading to Lagos from Ibadan was sited refuelling after it broke down halfway through the journey leaving passengers stranded in the middle of nowhere on Thursday.
Let us assume the gauge was faulty; did the driver not have records of movement of the train and the last time it was fueled? At least that would have made him know without relying on gauge that the train needs to be fueled before starting the job? What if this were to be an aircraft flying and with a faulty fuel guage?
In a normal clime, this man ought to have resigned honorably.