Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president, has called the contentious Lagos-Calabar coastal superhighway project an unnecessary priority.
The 700-kilometer project, which will traverse nine states, was awarded to Hitech Construction Company Limited under an Engineering, Procurement, Construction, and Financing (EPC+F) arrangement, in which the federal government provides counterpart funding and the contractor bears the majority of the risk.
The first phase of the project, which is 47.47 kilometers long and starts in Lagos, was started by the Federal Government in March 2024.
Key opposition figures, including Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, had criticized the FG for the project.
According to PUNCH, in “Nigeria: Past and Future”, one of the books released in commemoration of his 88th birthday, Obasanjo described it as a conduit designed to steal public funds.
Obasanjo claimed that because “everything is said to be transactional and the slogan is ‘It is my turn to chop,'” it seems that the practice of taking advantage of Nigerians will continue.
Additionally, he criticized the government for spending N21 billion on Vice President Kashim Shettima’s new official residence.
The former president claimed that most of the people who have had the chance to lead Nigeria are only interested in corruptly enriching themselves while the country remains in a state of terrible poverty and deplorable underdevelopment.
He said “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.’
“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!”
The former president claimed that in order to address some of the issues confronting the nation, it is necessary to examine the liberal democracy practiced in the West and determine how it might be modified to take into account the unique characteristics of Africa.
“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.
The administration has not yet responded to Obasanjo’s allegations.
