The N15.6 trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project has been described as corrupt and wasteful by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
He also criticised the administration of President Bola Tinubu for spending N21 billion on Vice President Kashim Shettima’s new official mansion, claiming it was an inappropriate priority and a means of embezzling public monies.
The former leader revealed this in chapter six of his recently released book, “Nigeria: Past and Future,” in which he portrayed the personalities and characteristics of state and federal chief executives.
Last week, Obasanjo’s 88th birthday was celebrated with the release of two new books, including this one.
The 700-kilometer Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway will cost N4.93 billion per kilometre, according to Works Minister David Umahi, who also stated that the contract was awarded on a counterpart-funding basis rather than a public-private partnership.
The pilot phase, which starts at Eko Atlantic and is anticipated to end at the Lekki Deep Sea Port, has received about N1.06 trillion, or 6% of the project’s total budget.
Many prominent Nigerians, including the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2023 general elections, Atiku Abubakar, 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 have been Tinubu’s companion and business partner for many years.
Assessing the two years of Tinubu in government, Obasanjo said it seemed that the game of short-changing the over 230 million Nigerians will continue because “Everything is said to be transactional and the slogan is ‘It is my turn to chop.’’
When reached on Wednesday evening, presidential spokesperson Bayo Onanuga refused to comment on Obasanjo’s criticism of his principal.
According to the former president, most of the people who have had the chance to serve as governors, presidents, ministers, commissioners, and even chairmen of local governments are ill-prepared, demonic, and self-centred, and they are all out to corruptly enrich themselves while the country remains in a state of terrible poverty and deplorable underdevelopment.
The former president noted that the majority of those vying for office in the nation would even go so far as to take out billions of naira in loans, thinking that they would not have any trouble repaying the loans from public funds after they were elected.
Obasanjo claimed that many people vying to be governors or to lead the nation in some other capacity are only interested in using their positions to enrich themselves and their friends and then leave the country worse off than when they found it.
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He stated, “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 are left to guess where the money came from. Having got away with that in the first term, he consigned to himself almost half of the state resources in the second term. He was a typical example of the goings-on at that level almost universally in the country, with only a few exceptions.
“State resources are captured and appropriated to themselves with a pittance to staff and associates to close the mouths of those that could blow the whistle or raise alarm against them while in office and when they are out of office.’’
He further noted that “The ones that are criminally ridiculous are the chief executives that deceive, lie and try to cover up on the realities and truth of action and inaction on contract awards, agreements, treaties, borrowings and forward sales of national assets. Such chief executives are unfit for the job they find themselves in.
“Typical examples of waste, corruption and misplaced priority are the murky Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road on which the President had turned deaf ears to protests and the new Vice-President’s official residence built at a cost of N21bn in the time of economic hardship to showcase the administration hitting the ground running and to show the importance of the office of the Vice-President. What small minds!”
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To address some of the challenges facing the country, the former President said that there is a need to interrogate the Western liberal democracy being practised and see how it could be reviewed to reflect African peculiarities.
“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 within African history, culture, attributes and characteristics, one that will take necessary African factors into consideration. Until we can get a better word or description for it, let us call it Afrodemocracy.
“It is from Afrodemocracy that we will draw up an African people’s constitution for any African that chooses to go the way of Afrodemocracy, which will avoid most, to all, the faults we have found in Western liberal democracy,” he suggested.
