Usman Gur Mohammed, Former MD/CEO, Transition Company of Nigeria
As is always characteristic of Nigeria, complete confusion and frustration has been created by Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) Management in the name of implementation of online payment.
It is unheard of, that the management decided to start online payment today and completely stopped cash payment. The confusion includes:
1.Not many people have smart phone and internet to access their website so they are wondering in confusion compromising the government social distance.
2. NRC has no way of verifying payment through a terminal. Those who paid and their telephone goes off cannot be verified hence cannot travel.
3. They have to physically collect everybody’s telephone thus compromising the social distance promoted by the same government.
4. The hand held instrument is not effective. It taken up to three minutes and sometime longer time to verify payment.
5. The management has completely stopped cash payment. So no alternative to their web based payment.
6. Though global practice online payment are usually cheaper since it reduces risk of handling cash, allow the organization to get money in advance etc. The NRC increased the ticket price by more than 5% because of online payment.
7. After creating confusion, they eventually allowed cash payment longer after the departure time.
8. NRC eventually sold tickets through cash payment for seats already sold through online payment because they have no means of verifying those who paid online.
9. Inside the train confusion and fighting all over.
All these is happening not because Nigeria does not have intelligent, partrotic and reasonable people to manage its affair. It is because we have a system that consistently promotes the most useless and vision less people to lead and manage us. It is very unfortunate.