Okhiria, on his part, said that the Nigerian Shippers’ Council, being the port regulator, and the former Minister of Transportation set up a ministerial committee headed by the the former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Transportation to look into freight charges.

He said the purpose of the committee was to ensure smooth operation of freight rail.

“The impact on NRC is that the terminals are charging 60,000 per containers for moving the container to the wagon freight, which is still higher than the movement on trucks, and the Shippers’ Council is working on that.

”The terminal charges are high because of the double handling; presently, moving cargo by rail is more expensive than road but is faster.

“We are looking to see how we can do it, we have minimum operational cost, and we don’t need to go and borrow money to buy diesel, that is why we are starting the freight rail movement of cargo handling now,” Okhiria said.

He said that NRC had begun the freight rail movement from the port pending when they receive order from the Minister to reduce charges.

Okhiria said that NRC was operating the rail freight with the narrow gauge before now, but stopped due to security issues.

He said the corporation would use a month to repair all the vandalised tracks on the narrow gauge, adding that the management would assemble all  the wagons and service them before putting them on track.

Okhira said that NRC had about 120 narrow gauge wagons, as the Federal Government had been proactive and the corporation had placed order through the China Civil Engineering Construction Company. (NAN)(www.nannews.ng)

Editing by Oluwole Sogunle