Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway As Symptom Of Something Frightful

 By Dianam Dakolo

A ruler's twisted judgment is what immediately becomes apparent when the US$13 billion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway comes under close scrutiny. A project never canvassed by any community along the entire stretch covered, from Lagos to Cross River State!

For, as one-time Governor of that State, Donald Duke, disclosed on national television on August 5, "There is already a road to Calabar.... I have driven along it several times....If the road is poor, fix it." 

The only possible explanation for the project, which was awarded through 'restricted bidding' to a company in which the ruler has substantial interest, in violation of the Public Procurement Act, 2007, was provided in the comments of the former Cross River Governor: " 

I think the road serves other purposes because I drove once on the road and all I saw on the right flank going towards Epe was land reclamation and all that." Whose business is at that site being reclaimed? A business/private interest that blinds the ruler to overwhelming national challenges - virtual collapse of power supply, a raging insurgency and banditry that have spread from the North East, North West to the Middle Belt, and now Oyo, Ondo and Ogun States, among others! 

A country perennially afflicted by excessive flooding and extensive destruction and displacement of millions of citizens, from the North (Adamawa, Taraba, Benue, etc.) through Edo, Anambra, etc. to the southernmost tip (Rivers, Bayelsa, etc.), is sadly ruled by individuals hopelessly divorced from reality and preoccupied with incredibly inane schemes. 

Every year as it comes to this season, when the moist southwest monsoon winds sweep inland from the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Guinea, heavy rains bring flash floods as we have experienced in many Nigerian cities in the past month. 

Then Cameroon's Lagdo Dam remains a constant source of widespread anxiety in all the aforesaid States that have witnessed the seasonal havoc, with homes, including storeyed buildings, completely submerged and property destroyed. In September-November 2022, the Ughelli-Patani and Mbiama-Ahoada stretches of the arterial East-West Road were completely cut off, and Port Harcourt could not be accessed by car from the Delta/Bayelsa axis all through the period. But solutions are possible and desperately needed. 

As for the Lagdo Dam, which environmentalists have warned could cause 1.2 to 2 million deaths in the Lower Niger within an hour or two of an accident such as dam break, the solution lies in the much-talked-about Datsin Hausa Dam, Wuro Dam, and Wuroalhaji Dam - all in Adamawa State. These would serve as detention centres for water from Lagdo.

They have been awaiting concrete action by the Federal Government since the era of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo (1976-79), when an agreement with the Cameroonian authorities was reached.  

As things stand today, we only need to look at the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway to understand how things got so pathetic in our country, with over 60 million of us thrown into poverty within a space of three years; democratic governance eviscerated and authoritarianism, fostered by the buffoonery of the legislative arm, in full sway. A usurper's twisted judgement is at the heart of it all.

*Dakolo is a commentator on public issues