Atiku challenges Tinubu to reveal the cost of the Lagos-Calabar Highway project.
Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential contender in the 2023 general election, has challenged President Bola Tinubu to reveal the total cost of the Lagos-Calabar highway project.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Atiku argued that given Nigeria’s ongoing catastrophic economic woes, the Tinubu administration could no longer remain mute on the amount of public cash granted to the project.
The Federal Government has announced the beginning of construction on the 700-kilometer Lagos-Calabar coastal roadway.
The Minister of Works, David Umahi, stated this in an Abuja statement issued last week by his Special Adviser on Media, Orji Uchenna.
However, in questioning the contractor, the former vice president, via his media adviser, Paul Ibe, questioned the Tinubu administration’s choice to give the contract to Gilbert Chagoury’s Hitech without competitive bidding.
He also queried why the Tinubu administration released N1.06 trillion for the pilot phase, or 6% of the project, which begins in Eko Atlantic and is slated to end at Lekki Deep Sea Port.
The statement, signed on Tuesday in Abuja by Atiku Abubakar, Special Assistant to the Former Vice President, said in part: “The Tinubu administration cannot continue to reply to the public investigation with insults.” They must come clean about this scheme, because Nigerians need to know the truth. As a result, I present the administration with six points.
“1. What is the total cost of the Lagos–Calabar coastal highway? 2. Why is the Nigerian government funding the project, despite the fact that it is a public-private partnership? 3. Why is the project launching from Chagoury’s Eko Atlantic? 4. Why are we investing N1.06tn on the pilot phase, which barely covers 47km?
“5. Why did the N1.06 trillion not receive clearance from the National Assembly? 6. Why wasn’t there a competitive offer for the project? 7. Finally, how did the Tinubu administration obtain the design and right of way in under seven months, given that the previous administrations of Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari never touched the project?”
Atiku also urged the Tinubu administration to respond to the inquiries line by line in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, rather than adopting the banal and juvenile approach of “insulting their way out of every inquiry.”
Bayo Onanuga, the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, advised Atiku in a statement that he needed to double-check his project information.
“In his desperation to continually be in the news as a self-appointed opposition leader, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has allowed himself to be led down a blind alley again by his poorly informed advisors,” the statement stated.
Onanuga claimed that Abubakar used “false allusions” to the project in his “futile attempt to degrade and find flaws in the ambitious and transformational” road development initiative.