THE Managing Director of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), Dr. Kayode Opeifa, has identified chronic underfunding as the single greatest challenge confronting the corporation and the wider rail sector.
In a candid interview on The Exchange Podcast, hosted by Femi Soneye, Opeifa stated that the sector needs to be treated as both a social and economic priority to unlock necessary resources.
 
Opeifa reframed the concept of “challenges” as “issues,” stating that God gave humans brains to solve problems. However, when pressed on the sector’s primary bottleneck, he noted that “funding is key.”
He argued that rail is one of the fundamental pillars that distinguish a developed nation from a developing one.
He lamented that the sector is often not prioritised in national budgeting despite its proven impact on poverty reduction and economic development.
 
“Mobility is what many countries in the world focus on,” he stated, explaining that when people can move freely to trade and do business, the entire economy benefits.
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he NRC boss urged the government to view rail not just as an economic sector but also as a social sector, explaining that “this dual classification is crucial because a purely commercial view of rail does not account for its broader societal benefits, such as reduced road congestion, lower accident rates, and environmental sustainability.”
He warned that without this understanding, “the economic people will not put money,” and the sector will continue to be starved of the capital required for meaningful expansion and modernisation. He called for a paradigm shift in how the nation’s resource managers perceive investment in rail infrastructure.
 
Opeifa was, however, full of praise for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whom he said has given the NRC significant support.
He appealed for “more support, more money and more understanding from those who are managing the economy.”
He pointed to the recent statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which listed rail as one of the top 10 contributors to Nigeria’s GDP growth in the last few quarters, with a 37 per cent year-on-year increase. This, he argued, is tangible proof of the sector’s economic potential when invested in.
   
Opeifa stated that the NRC’s engineers have the capacity to maintain and build rail systems, but they are hamstrung by a lack of financial resources.
He revealed that if funding is provided for the full optimisation of the Lagos-Kano line, the NRC can make it “supercharged and working for Nigerians” within three to six months.