Ticket racketeering: Several passengers stranded at Rigasa train station

Several travellers trying to board the Kaduna-Abuja train at the Rigasa station in Kaduna State were stranded Sunday due to heavy racketeering by “unscrupulous” railway staff working with middlemen.

Daily Trust reports that dozens of passengers could not purchase the ticket for the 2pm train as railway staff failed to sell the tickets through the official ticketing window. 

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Instead, travellers were told that the tickets had been exhausted.

Our correspondent, however, gathered that middlemen and some influential individuals were given access to the ticketing office to make purchase while other travellers waited outside.

The e-ticketing website of the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) has been down since Friday and travellers have been advised to purchase their tickets at the station.

However, our correspondent reports that this has provided an avenue for unscrupulous railway staff to liaise with middlemen to inflate the price of tickets.

Earlier, when Daily Trust visited the station at 7am, it was observed that those who were unable to purchase the 6:40am tickets had formed queues to purchase tickets for the 10:30am train. 

However, many of them could not purchase the tickets as they were told available tickets had been exhausted.

At the Rigasa station, our correspondent gathered that middlemen bought economy tickets at N3,000 but sold them to desperate travellers avoiding the Kaduna-Abuja highway  as high as N7, 000.

A resident of Kaduna who was at the station by 8:30am said he was informed that there was no ticket for the 10:30am. He was advised to wait and purchase a ticket for the next train. He said he had instead purchased a ticket through a middleman at N7,000.

A Daily Trust staff who was at the station at 10am to purchase a 2pm ticket confirmed that tickets were not sold through the official ticketing window. He said, two hours later, the railway staff announced that tickets for the 2pm train had been exhausted.