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The road don bend.

By Olu Adekunle

Let me be clear from the beginning. My intention in this piece is not to mock the Tinubu Administration. It is to showcase the arrogance of power and to douse the high level of sycophancy that many Tinubu aides and supporters have become notorious for.

After all the grammar, all the propaganda, all the insults against any Nigerian who dared to question the holy Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, the Minister of Works, Dave Umahi has finally announced that the coastal road will no longer go through the coast.

Yes, the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road will no longer be coastal after Lagos and Ogun States. It will now detour inland through Edo State to go and join the abandoned, dilapidated East-West Road.

Umahi, with a straight face, called it “a wonderful engineering decision by Mr President.” Wonderful indeed!

Instead of hiding his head in shame or at the very least humbling himself to explain to Nigerians how billions were wasted on a route that was never properly surveyed, he describes this monumental failure as a wonderful engineering decision by President Tinubu. That is the definition of sycophancy. No remorse, no accountability, just praise-singing even in failure.

This one pain ooo!

When this administration announced this 700km coastal highway at over N15 trillion – a budget that could have fixed every federal road in Nigeria from Sokoto to Bayelsa, many Nigerians advised the government that the project is not a priority. We said many more critical inland roads were in need of attention and that the country has more pressing needs.

We said, look at Abuja-Kaduna-Kano road that kills people daily. Look at East-West Road itself that has been under construction since Jonathan’s era. Look at Jos-Bauchi-Gombe. Look at Lokoja-Benin. Look at the abandoned federal roads in the South -East and so on. Look at the inland roads that carry food from the farms to the markets. But no. The government and its army of data boys said we are enemies of progress. They told us we don’t understand economics. They told us the coastal road would be like Dubai.

Reno Omokri and his fellow praise-singers were leading the choir. They insulted Peter Obi. They insulted every economist. They insulted the Ilaje people whose houses and businesses were demolished in Lagos for the road without proper compensation. They said anyone against the road hates Tinubu and hates Yorubas.

Now where are they? Where is Reno? Where are the wonderful engineering defenders?

A serious highway project in any serious country begins with surveys. Geological investigations. Hydrological evidence. Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA).

This one started with a presidential fiat and a YouTube commissioning.

Only now, after demolishing people’s houses and spending billions in Lagos and Ogun, Umahi is telling us that the soil in Ondo is peat. That there is 40-50 metres deep of weak soil. That there are too many bridges. That it will be too expensive. That there is flooding in Ahoada.

Did they just discover the soil is peat? Did the Atlantic Ocean move to Ondo yesterday? Did they not know Ondo has the longest coastline in Nigeria?

Of course they knew. Ilaje lawyers led by Dr. Benson Enikuomehin warned them. The communities from Ugbonla, Ilowo, Awoye, Abereke, Orioke – all the way to Escravos – warned them that they had bastardized the concept of a coastal highway.

Now, here is what completely destroys Umahi’s excuse.

All our neighbours on the same Atlantic seaboard, with the SAME soil, have built or are building coastal roads.

Benin Republic has the Cotonou to Ouidah coastal road and now the Porto Novo to Lagos link. Togo has the Lomé coastal bypass. Ghana has the Accra to Cape Coast to Elmina coastal road. Ivory Coast has Abidjan to Grand Bassam. Cameroon has Limbe-Idenau and Kribi-Campo. Even Senegal has its Dakar coastal highway.

In fact, right now, the 1,028km Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Highway, a $15.6 Billion project funded by the African Development Bank is being built through Benin, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast to Lagos. It goes through the same mangrove, same swamp, same beach. It is five countries, all coastal.

Is their soil different from ours? No.

West Africa from Ivory Coast to Cameroon shares one geological formation – the Dahomey Basin and Niger Delta Basin. What you find everywhere is barrier beach sand that shifts, mangrove mud and peat that is highly compressible 10 to 50 metres deep, hydromorphic clay that is waterlogged and salty, high water table and tidal flooding and erosion of 1.8 to 8 metres per year.

Ghana’s Volta Delta, Benin’s Lake Nokoué area, Togo’s coastal lagoons – all have peat. To be fair, Nigeria’s Ondo and Niger Delta section are worse in extent but not in type. Ghana and Benin have 15-30m peat, we have 40-50m in parts of Ilaje and Bayelsa. Ours is deeper, but the engineering solution is the same worldwide.

So how are they able to build and we are bending?

Because they did what Umahi seems not to have done. They did feasibility first. The AfDB did years of studies before drawing a line. Nigeria started with demolition, then started looking for soil reports.

They use ground improvement technology – the same technology that OSOPADEC used to build Igbokoda to Ugbonla road, and NDDC used for Ugbonla-Awoye in 2010, in the exact same Ilaje terrain Umahi now calls impossible.

As Senior Advocate Adegboruwa said, modern engineering has demonstrated that infrastructure can be constructed across difficult terrains, wetlands, riverine environments and mangrove ecosystems. Difficult terrain is an engineering challenge, not a reason to abandon an entire economic corridor.

The Abidjan-Lagos project also moved slightly upland in certain parts to avoid 3km long bridges but they published maps, geotech reports, comparative costs. Umahi just says wonderful engineering decision without publishing a single EIA or soil log.

For the fact that the design has been changed, it means no assessment or environmental impact assessment was duly carried out in my opinion.

Now you want to use the same East-West Road you abandoned to do coastal road. The original coastal route from Ugbonla to Escravos is 60-75km. Your new wonderful inland detour is approximately 130-150km. From N4-7 billion per km to N7.5-12 billion per km. Extra N1.5 trillion for a longer, useless route. This is wonderful decision indeed.

This has become second nature of the Tinubu administration to experiment and subsequently reverse policies. They remove subsidy without plan, reverse. They float Naira without buffer, reverse. They give new national anthem, people ignore. They announce coastal road is 750km to Calabar, now it ends in Ogun and connects to an old road. It shows a glaring lack of capacity.

They start projects not because they are viable, but because they look and sound good on TV. The Lagos section was hurriedly done for commissioning. The South-South that was used to justify the multi-billion-dollar loan has been cut off. Ondo’s 60% coastal communities have been erased from the map.

So what was the justification for the billions? What was the economic viability? What happened to the Environmental Impact Assessment? Does the EIA cover this new inland alignment or will they proceed with an EIA done for a materially different route?

No answer. Only wonderful engineering decision by Mr President.

To the South-South people who clapped for this government, how market? Una don see wonderful engineering?

To Reno Omokri and all who insulted Nigerians who asked questions, this is your legacy: A coastal road that is afraid of the coast. A road built by road benders.

Una do well!

• Olu Adekunle is a public policy analyst/public affairs commentator.