Lagos-Calabar highway project wasteful and corrupt- Obasanajo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo characterised the N15.6 trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project as wasteful and corrupt.

He equally slammed the President Bola Tinubu administration for spending N21bn on a new official residence for Vice President Kashim Shettima, calling it a misplaced priority and conduit designed to embezzle public funds.

He also lambasted the President Bola Tinubu administration for spending N21 billion on a new official mansion for Vice President Kashim Shettima, calling it a misguided priority and a conduit for embezzling public funds.

The ex-leader revealed this in chapter six of his new book, ‘Nigeria: Past and Future,’ in which he depicted the portraits and personalities of federal and state chief executives alike.

The book was one of two new books released to commemorate Obasanjo’s 88th birthday last week.

The Minister of Works, David Umahi, announced that the 700-kilometer Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway will cost N4.93 billion per kilometre, noting that the contract was given on a counterpart-funding basis rather than a Public-Private Partnership.

The pilot phase, which begins at Eko Atlantic and is planned to end at the Lekki Deep Sea Port, has been allocated around N1.06 trillion, or 6% of the total project budget.

Many prominent Nigerians, including Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential contender for the 2023 general elections, have questioned the Federal Government’s decision to award the contract to Gilbert Chagoury’s Hitech Construction Company without competitive bidding.

Chagoury is thought to be Tinubu’s long-time business partner and friend.

Assessing Tinubu’s two years in government, Obasanjo stated that it appears like the game of short-changing nearly 230 million Nigerians will continue because “everything is said to be transactional and the slogan is ‘It is my turn to chop.'”

When asked about Obasanjo’s criticism of his principal on Wednesday night, presidential spokesperson Bayo Onanuga declined to comment.

The former President stated that the majority of those who have been appointed to positions of leadership in the country, such as governors, presidents, ministers, commissioners, and even local government chairmen, are ill-prepared, satanic, and self-centred, and are all out to corruptly enrich themselves while the nation continues to suffer from abject poverty and condemnable underdevelopment.

According to Obasanjo, many people who want to be governors or lead the country in some way are simply interested in using their positions to enrich themselves and their cronies and then leaving the country worse off than when they arrived.

The former President stated that most office-seekers in the country would go so far as to borrow billions of naira loans, assuming that repaying them from public monies once elected would not be an issue.

He went on: “How do you explain the situation of a chief executive, a governor, whose business was owing the banks billions of naira and millions of dollars before becoming a governor and within two years of becoming governor, without his company doing any business, he paid all that his businesses owed the banks.

“You’re left to wonder where the money came from. Having gotten away with it in the first term, he took nearly half of the state’s resources in the second term.

The individual in question exemplified a common practice in the country: state resources are captured and appropriated for personal gain, while staff and associates are underpaid. This is done to silence whistleblowers and raise alarms against those in power.

He went on to say that “the ones that are criminally ridiculous are the chief executives who deceive, lie, and try to cover up the realities and truth of action and inaction on contract awards, agreements, treaties, borrowings, and forward sales of national assets.”

These CEOs are unsuited for their positions.Typical examples of waste, corruption, and misplaced priority include the murky Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road, where the President ignored protests, and the new Vice-President’s official residence, which was built at a cost of N21 billion during a time of economic hardship to demonstrate the administration’s ability to hit the ground running and the importance of the Vice-President’s office.

“What small minds!”
To address some of the country’s difficulties, the former President stated that there is a need to examine the Western liberal democracy in practice and see how it may be modified to reflect African characteristics.

“If the West, from where the liberal democracy started should complain about it not working well for them, we should be wise enough at this stage to interrogate, carry out introspection, internal analysis and realise that Western liberal democracy is not working for us and is not delivering apart from the shortcomings of the operators.

“We should seek democracy based on African history, culture, qualities, and characteristics, taking into account the relevant African aspects. For now, we can refer to it as Afrodemocracy.

We shall draft an African people’s constitution based on Afrodemocracy for any African who chooses to follow in its footsteps, which will eliminate most, if not all, of the flaws present in Western liberal democracy,” he proposed.