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The Allied Peoples Movement (APM) Presidential Campaign Organisation has demanded an immediate publication of all relevant procurement and payment records relating to the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway.
The campaign organisation also called for an independent engineering assessment of the realignment of the highway in Ondo State, as well as a comprehensive audit of the entire project’s cost, amount so far spent and further execution plan.
The Director-General, Makinde-Daura Presidential Campaign Organisation (MDPCO), Felix Hyat, who made the demands at a press briefing on Tuesday in Abuja, said while the country is in dire need of infrastructure, it does not need “opaque contracts and expensive excuses.”
Hyat noted that the announcement by the Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi, on the realignment of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway route has once again brought to the fore allegations of technical and planning incompetence and policy inconsistencies.
He stated that the Minister’s announcement also further reinforced questions of transparency and accountability, which have trailed the multi-trillion-naira project since its inception by the President Bola Tinubu administration.
According to him, “It is appalling that Minister Umahi, in a desperate bid to contain the gathering storm of public outrage, brazenly denied his earlier announcement of a presidential directive to realign the highway despite overwhelming video evidence of that announcement. Such denial is unbecoming of a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
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“In any event, knowing full well that the enduring test of government does not orbit in the grandeur of its projects or the boldness of its announcements, rather in the conveyance of common good, we are compelled to submit that the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project as conceived and presented to Nigerians by this administration has failed in major ways.
“While we have nothing against the construction of roads in any part of the country, it is important to state that the afterthought realignment of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway is an admission of technical incompetence, failure of proper planning and gross underestimation of the project’s engineering challenges.
“The vague reasons of climate change and environmental challenges adduced by Minister Umahi at this point beg the question. It only confirms that the Tinubu administration embarked on this huge project without the required statutory environmental impact assessment in gross violation of our extant laws.
“We urge Nigerians to judge this latest development against the troubling circumstances surrounding the project’s conception and award in 2024, which came without an approved engineering design, without transparent, open and competitive bidding process as required by the Public Procurement Act 2007 and without any budgetary provision and statutory appropriation by the National Assembly.”
Furthermore, Hyat stated that the fact that the Federal Government has remained silent on the expected “plunge in the cost” after redirecting the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway to an already existing road raises issues of financial accountability.
