In a bid to prevent recurrence of the Monday night attack on the Abuja-Kaduna train, the Minister of Transportation, Hon. Chibuike Amaechi, has said that the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) will henceforth provide aerial security for the trains when commercial activities resume.
Amaechi noted that the NAF was initially escorting the trains but had to stop recently due to bad weather which has led to drop in visibility to below 500 meters, making it impossible to fly.
The Minister who said this on Wednesday when he visited victims of the attack in 44 Nigerian Army Reference Hospital, Kaduna, noted that the NAF will have to escort the trains pending when the integrated security surveillance and monitoring solution for the rail line is implemented as ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari.
According to him, “I will speak with the president. He is already giving directives, and I am sure by the time we finish the repair of the rail tracks, we would have gotten approval for the security equipment and we would possibly have installed. But even if we did not install yet, we have spoken with the management of the Nigerian Air Force to escort the trains.
“They were previously escorting the trains but recently, the weather has been very bad and visibility dropped to below 500 meters so they couldn’t fly. So they’ve not being flying, that was why the attack was successful”, he said.
Furthermore, he noted that President Muhammadu Buhari has approved that people who will be walking on the rail tracks for the next six to seven months be employed, until the security equipment are installed.
“We intend to employ villagers on the corridor, so that they can report any suspicious movements to us and the security. If the Ministry of finance releases the funds, then we can know the number of those to employ. But we will involve the DSS in screening the people we will employ”, he said.
On repairs of the damaged track, he said, “We will commence work immediately and the military has promised us security as we work. It is less than 2kilometers of rail tracks, we will complete the work as soon as possible”.
He expressed gratitude to the Nigerian Army for treating the victims free of charge and for giving them maximum medical care, adding that only seven patients are left as the rest have been discharged.
For his part, the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai said Nigeria has enough intelligence to take action, noting that the Air Force undertakes enough Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), while the State Security Service (SSS) has informants all over the place.
“We know what they are planning, we get the reports; the problem is for the agencies to take action. Don’t wait until they attack before they respond. The Army should go after their enclave to wipe them. Let the Air Force bomb them.
“Before, they were categorised as bandits and if you bomb them, you will have issues with human rights organisations and international criminal courts and so on, but now they have been declared terrorist by the courts, they can be legally killed without any consequences to international human rights organisations.
“We know where their camps are, we know where they are, the SSS have their phone numbers, they listen to them, and they give me the report. We know what they are planning. We shouldn’t be waiting for them to attack, why can’t we go after them?
“We are in a state of war, this place should be declared a war zone. The Army, the Air Force, the Police should go in there and kill them. Will there be innocent casualties? Yes! In every war situation, there are casualties”, he said.
He further said that they have written to the Nigerian Railways Corporation twice to stop the evening service, noting that the last train from Kaduna to Abuja should leave by 4pm so that it will get to Abuja in daylight.
“If anything is to happen, the response time will be quick, maybe in 30 minutes response time. When something happens, the response time will be faster in the day time. We were lucky the military response was just within an hour because it was dead in the night”, he said.
