There was a palpable fear of insecurity among scores of passengers who were left stranded on Monday morning after the Abuja/Kaduna train conveying them broke down in a bush in Duste area.
An eyewitness said that the train, which left Kaduna quite early, developed mechanical faults few minutes into the journey.
According to Daily Trust, the train had departed the Rigasa Station in Kaduna before the incident occurred.
The source noted that the train stopped twice before it eventually ground to a halt along a bush path in Dutse, where it finally broke down.
While many of the passengers clustered together for safety, a few aggrieved ones were seen engaging the officials of the train.
An Assistant National Secretary of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Midat Joseph, who was one of the passengers, said the train developed fault around 7.00am.
“ I left my house as early as 5:am to join the 6:40am train but unfortunately I have been trapped here in this forest. This is not the first time I will be experiencing this mess,” he said.
Another passenger who craved anonymity remarked that he had similar experience on Saturday, saying they spent six hours to get to Abuja.
“This is unfortunate. On Saturday, we spent five hours from Abuja to Kaduna. We left Abuja 6.00pm but we did not get to Kaduna until 11.00pm,” he said.
An undisclosed engineer of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, who addressed the passengers, told them that it would take them two hours to fix the train.
“We are very sorry, the locomotive is faulty. We have contacted the Idu Train Station for another locomotive. It would take them two hours to be here,” he said.
