Abuja-Kaduna train: N900m e-ticketing, five years on, and passengers still pay agents

A passenger says she could not buy an Abuja-Kaduna train ticket online, then was offered one on the spot for almost double the official fare. Five years after the Federal Government rolled out a N900 million e-ticketing system to stop exactly this, the claim has put the platform and the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) under fresh scrutiny.

N7,000 for a N3,600 ticket

Instagram blogger Faizah Raji, who posts as @wearegst, set off the row with a viral video, which she followed with posts on X. She said the official booking portal would not give her a ticket, but an agent was ready to sell her one for N7,000. She put the official adult fare at N3,600, which means she paid N3,400 more than she should have.

Her story is a single passenger's account. It does not show where the agent got the ticket, and it does not show whether anyone inside the railway system helped. The NRC says she admitted buying from the agent at twice the official price after failing to get a ticket on the portal.

The NRC pushes back

The corporation rejected the claim that it holds back tickets to let agents resell them. Its Chief Public Relations Officer, Callistus Unyimadu, said in a statement that the NRC does not directly sell tickets on the route, and described the allegations as misleading.

Ticketing, the NRC explained, is handled by private firms under public-private partnerships. SecureID/TPS runs the Abuja-Kaduna service, Global Software Digital Solutions runs Lagos-Ibadan, and Fane Warri-Itakpe Ticketing Solutions Limited runs Warri-Itakpe.

The NRC also described its safeguards:

• NIN requirement: After the 2022 attack on the Abuja-Kaduna train, tickets could only be bought with a National Identification Number.
• Live NIMC link: At Idu and Kubwa in Abuja and Rigasa in Kaduna, staff can pull up the photo tied to the NIN used for a booking.
• Second check: From 2025, passengers must also present identification before boarding.

The corporation blames scammers who exploit high demand and slip past its verification process. It says staff caught colluding will be disciplined, and that the ticketing firms have been told to make their platforms easier to access.

How the system was sold in 2021

The e-ticketing platform was launched in January 2021 after commuters complained about racketeering at train stations. The Federal Ministry of Information said the project was a N900 million public-private partnership. SecureID would provide it and run it for 10 years to recover its money, then hand it over to the NRC.

Then-Transportation Minister Rotimi Amaechi said it would address the racketeering complaints, according to a report of the launch. The board chairman of the NRC, Ibrahim Musa, said it would end the persistent allegations. The ministry reported that about 25,000 tickets had already been issued online during the pilot.

A problem the NRC has admitted before

The concern did not begin with this video. In September 2024, NRC spokesman Yakub Mahmood said management had received information that passengers struggling to book online had been exploited, and that some officials had taken advantage. The corporation promised more train trips on the route.

Other reports have described the same problem. Daily Trust reported passengers saying that economy tickets officially costing N3,500 to N4,000 were being resold for between N5,000 and N10,000. Some people said they waited for sales to open and still could not get a seat. According to the paper, the NRC did not respond to its requests for comment, while a station official pointed to a shortage of locomotives and coaches. A Leadership editorial called for investigation into the resale of tickets and for better monitoring at stations and on board.

The NRC's current position is that outsiders are mainly to blame. Its own 2024 statement, however, acknowledged that some officials were involved. Both can be true at once, but the corporation has not publicly explained how much of the problem comes from each.

What the public still needs to know

If the NRC and its concessionaires want to settle the matter, some basic figures would help:

• How many seats go online? The share of seats on each trip released on the app and website, against counters and other channels.
• Why do trips sell out so fast? Whether it is real demand, fewer trains, or bulk buying by agents.
• What does the contract require? What the PPP agreement demands of SecureID/TPS on uptime, access and fraud control, and what happens if it falls short.
• Has anyone been punished? Whether any staff member or agent has been disciplined or prosecuted for racketeering since 2021.

The 10-year concession means SecureID is due to run the system until around 2031. So the answers affect not just this week's controversy but the next several years of train travel on the corridor.

The bottom line

The N900 million platform was supposed to take middlemen and cash out of ticket buying. If passengers are still paying agents nearly double to get on the train, the claim that it solved racketeering does not hold. Until the NRC and its concessionaires publish evidence, the question of whether the system has done its job remains open.