Under investigation in this article is a generalised nonlinear Schrodinger-Maxwell-Bloch system for the picosecond optical pulse propagation in an inhomogeneous erbium-doped silica optical fibre. Lax pair, conservation laws, Darboux transformation, and generalised Darboux transformation for the system are constructed; with the one-and two-soliton solutions, the first-and second-order rogue waves given. Soliton propagation is discussed. Nonlinear tunneling effect on the solitons and rogue waves are investigated. We find that (i) the detuning of the atomic transition frequency from the optical pulse frequency affects the velocity of the pulse when the detuning is small, (ii) nonlinear tunneling effect does not affect the energy redistribution of the soliton interaction, (iii) dispersion barrier/well has an effect on the soliton velocity, whereas nonlinear well/barrier does not, (iv) nonlinear well/barrier could amplify/compress the solitons or rogue waves in a smoother manner than the dispersion barrier/well, and (v) dispersion barrier could "attract" the nearby rogue waves, whereas the dispersion well has a repulsive effect on them.