The minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi has directed the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) to hand over tickets and passengers’ identification to Secure ID, the company in charge of the e-ticketing platform for the Abuja-Kaduna rail service.
He believes this will reduce crime and reduce security crises.
Amaechi disclosed this on Wednesday when the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) presented the Full Business Case Certificates (FBC) for the Lagos-Ibadan and Itakpe-Warri e-ticketing service to the ministry of transportation.
According to him, the introduction of the e-ticketing platform for Abuja-Kaduna had increased the generated revenue from about N100 million to N400 million monthly, successfully blocking revenue leakages.
"The benefits of e-ticketing is that we rose from N100 million to N400 million per month, which is an improvement.
“We have been able to do something that will eliminate leakages.
"On the issue of ticket racketeering, I have spoken to the person in charge of Abuja-Kaduna to take over the identification process from NRC. Because what the National Assembly told me was that NRC doesn't cross-check the ID of passengers on the tickets, and the ticketing company had wanted to do it, but they have not gotten the approval from NRC,” Mr. Amaechi said.
"It’s not all about crime alone but it’s also security.
“So, if we release it to the technology outfit, even though we cannot eliminate 100 percent crime and corruption, it will reduce the danger of having to run into security crises, so that we know that what we are battling with is not crises in our terminals but on the way and I believe that, that also will be sorted out as we go to cabinet for approval of the security gadgets."
Earlier, Michael Ohiani, the acting Director-General of the ICRC said that the concession is for ten years which will generate over N140 billion during the period and also create over 3,000 direct and indirect jobs.
