The Independent Media and Policy Initiative (IMPI) has said former Vice President Atiku Abubakar sparked controversy over the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway project to discredit it.
The group’s chairman, Chief Niyi Akinsiju Cifian, disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday.
Atiku Abubakar faulted the statement by Works Minister, Dave Umahi, that the 700km Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway will tentatively cost N15.6 trillion.
He knocked Umahi for altering the initial plan of the project after Gilbert Chagoury’s Hitech had been awarded the contract without any competitive bidding.
But Cifian said there is enough proof to support the Federal Government’s choice of HiTECH to construct the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway.
“On appropriation, we note that the former Vice President referenced the N500 million captured in the name of the project in the 2024 budget but finds fault with the approval of N1.06 trn by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) for the take-off of the project,” Cifian said.
“Again, we believe that Waziri Abubakar deliberately chose to ignore the convention of anticipatory approval, by which FEC can increase funds allocated to a budgetary item for exigency purposes with the intent of submitting the same to the legislative arm for consideration and approval.
“Our general submission is that Waziri Abubakar’s vaunted interrogation of the award process of the Coastal Road to Hitech Construction Company lacks substance and rational logic. It smacks of public exhibitionism to showcase his personal alternative reality.”
Cifian noted that there is no unified standard pricing template for the cost of building a kilometre of road anywhere in the world, adding that the realities of road building have much to do with a number of variables: location, terrain, type of construction, number of lanes, lane width, surface durability, and the number of bridges, to name a few.
“Yet, for the purpose of engagement, we reviewed some cost estimates in some other countries to establish the context of fraud or otherwise that Waziri Abubakar is trying to throw up.
“To build a 2-lane road of 12 metres wide of each lane with no bridges in states of North Eastern United States of America is $3.34m per km (when converted to Naira using the N1200/$ adopted by Umahi, it comes to N4.08bn per km) while same 2-lane road in South Eastern USA with no bridges is $3.78m per km (N4.53bn per km).”
He added that these figures are far higher than the N4.329 billion per kilometre of 10 lanes of coastal road with very peculiar terrain that Umahi says Hitech has commenced construction of.
Cifian, however, commended Tinubu and Umahi for their prudence in reducing the cost outlay for the construction of the Coastal Road, adding that the group is impressed with the speed and pace of construction since the Federal Government awarded it.
