Atiku to Tinubu: Disclose cost of Lagos-Calabar highway project

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 general elections, Atiku Abubakar, has asked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to disclose the full cost of the Lagos-Calabar highway project.

In a statement on Tuesday by Phrank Shaibu, a special assistant to the former vice president, Atiku said that the Tinubu administration could not continue to keep silent on how much public funds would be spent on the project at a time when Nigeria was facing dire economic challenges.

The former vice president earlier questioned the Tinubu administration’s decision to award the contract to Gilbert Chagoury’s Hitech without competitive bidding.

He also wondered why the Tinubu administration released N1.06trn for the pilot phase or six per cent of the project—which begins at the Eko Atlantic and is expected to terminate at the Lekki Deep Sea Port.

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The statement reads in part: “The Tinubu administration cannot continue to respond to the public inquiry with insults. It must come clean on this project because Nigerians deserve to know the truth.

“I, therefore, present six posers to the administration: how much is the total cost of the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway? Why is the project being funded by the Nigerian government despite being a PPP? Why is the project taking off from Chagoury’s Eko Atlantic? Why is N1.06trn being spent on the pilot phase, which is just 47km? Why did the N1.06trn not get the approval of the National Assembly? Why wasn’t there a competitive bidding for the project?

“Finally, how did the Tinubu administration get the design, as well as the right of way, in just seven months, since it claims the past administrations of Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari never touched the project?”

Atiku, therefore, asked the Tinubu administration to, in the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act, respond to the questions line by line instead of taking the mundane route of “insulting their way out of every inquiry.”