Women join men to sit on train roof as fuel scarcity bites harder

The members of the Nigerian Railway Corporation’s Taskforce for arresting passengers who sit on the roof of train coaches were on Wednesday stunned to see women among such passengers.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the defiant women joined their male counterparts due to congestion in the coaches.
NAN reports that the congestion witnessed in the train services since Monday due to the current fuel scarcity in the country was worsened by the reduction of train services from four to three.
The NRC, following the derailment of one of its Mass Transit Trains at Ikeja, had reduced the services to three on Wednesday morning.
The corporation used four stocks to run its services from Ijoko in Ogun State to Ido and Apapa in Lagos State in the morning and back in the evening.
However, one of the four stocks derailed, reducing the services to three and which left hundreds of passengers stranded at the trains’ stations.
Defiant passengers, including women who are desperate to get to their destinations, threw caution to the wind and climbed onto the coaches’ roof.
The members of the taskforce could not take any action because the congestion that led to people sitting on the roof was beyond comprehension.
The number of passengers on the roof was more than those in the coaches.
Meanwhile, the NRC has said that it would restore normal services in the evening after removing the derailed train at Ikeja.