At least 163 passengers and seven crew members who boarded the ill-fated AK9 Abuja-Kaduna train on March 28, 2022, remain untraceable, the Nigerian Railway Corporation has said.
Fidet Okhiria, the NRC’s Managing Director, made this known while providing situation reports and updates on the incident.
Recall that the train was attacked by terrorists on its way to Kaduna from Abuja.
In the update, which is sixth of its kind from the corporation since the incident happened, Fidet disclosed that 191 passengers had been confirmed safe and had since been reunited with their families.
He assured that work was ongoing to get the rail line back to operations.
According to him, “46 phone numbers on the manifest are still either switched off or not reachable since Tuesday morning. 33 phone numbers on the manifest are ringing but still no response from the other end.”
He further explained 62 phone numbers on the manifest when called responded non-existent, while 22 persons are reported missing by their relatives, with eight persons confirmed dead.
The NRC’s Managing Director stated that on the crew members in the train, there were a total of 20 train crew on board, stressing that seven (are) NRC staff, five are okay and two are missing.
He added that of the 10 janitors, six are okay, three missing and one dead, adding that of the three onboard caterers, one is okay and two are missing.
Okhiria explained that SP 00020, one of the coaches was re-railed back to Rigasa station safely.
This, according to him brings the total number of recovered coaches and safely moved to the NRC stations to eight.
He said that the intensive track repair works continued on-site to enable the recovery of the remaining coaches and locomotives.