HAVE you noticed that Dave Nweze Umahi, the self-styled Professor of (Engineering) Practice – whatever that means – stutters these days, intentionally stammers when he is unable to escape explaining what happened to the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Coastal Highway, a flagship project of Tinubu that cost $11 billion – money we didn’t have, money we borrowed, and money we have lost.
The Honourable Minister of Works does not seem to have been majorly involved in the project hence he has been issuing contradictory disclaimers on the road. Each time Umahi issues the refuttals, he directly credits Tinubu’s engineering wizardry for the changes that have turned the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Coastal Highway to a road to nowhere.
Lives were destroyed, businesses ruined, and Umahi remained foul-mouthed in responding to questions over a road that establishing its technical details drew a lot of suspicion from the beginning.
The verdict was that the haste over getting the project running made it seem like a heist. Isn’t it proving worse than the suspicions?
Nigerians were weighing the enormity of a road through over 753km of forbidden terrains, some points deeper than our Prof Engineering can imagine.
There are other terrifying under water features – gorges, ravine, chasm, that were not studied before Tinubu threw $11 billion away. Could this be what they now call “engineering challenges”? Umahi was deaf to all fears on the feasibility of the project.
He is just discovering that he is the one to clear the debris about the road many had challenged the cost and the hurry that resulted in many destructions when half of $11 billion would have made impact if applied to other infrastructure needs.
Unlike Tinubu, Umahi has no immunity and could be the one to go to jail over a road that he has praised to high heaven without knowing what it entailed.
The Coastal Highway spews illegality at every point. No technical design. No survey. No environmental and social impact assessment report. No budget provision. No assessment from the procurement agency. No competitive bid.
Umahi has confessed that it was the ingenuity of the Tinubu who kept “realigning” the highway that got us this far. If we remember, Tinubu commanded that the highway should spur into Edo State. Monday Okpebholo thanked Tinubu in October 2025 for what he called an “Independence anniversary gift”.
Have you heard of a road of that magnitude being off its planned route, if there was any? And there are still no clear indications about the additional costs.
While we are expecting that some money would be returned since we have abandoned the more challenging terrain that would have entailed more bridges, more landfilling, more dredging to reach stable soil, like the logic of most things Tinubu, there are whispers that the project needs more money.
In my column of 5 May 2024, I said these about the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway:
“Umahi is unable to explain anything about the Coastal Highway beyond defending what does not make any sense. His commitment to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu comes with the readiness to pause his own thinking unless it pleases the President.
“What is so important about the Coastal Highway that it is priority over security and the attendant food scarcity? How did Hi Tech Construction Limited qualify for such complex project? Which other companies bided with Hi Tech? Who set the cost of the project at N15 trillion? Who is lending Nigeria the money?”
Title of that article was, ‘Everything About Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway Has Wrong Smells’.
On Umahi’s attitude I had noted, “Anger with which Minister of Works David Umahi addresses the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project unleashes pungent smells that are entirely unpleasant. They have cast a pall of mystery on the project that is clothed with an urgency that is unbecomingly breath-taking”.
“By the power conferred on me as the Honourable Minister of Works, and in consultation with the Permanent Secretary, the Minister of State, the directors, and the entire staff of the Ministry, we have decided to name the entire Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This is a dream that Mr President had about 27 years ago,” Umahi told Nigerians in July.
Has the dream died? Will the sycophancy stop? Umahi says the project is intact. Will Tinubu be called to account for his $11 billion road? Is it too late for the National Assembly to ask Tinubu where he got the money to fund his fancy project since it was not appropriated?
Chances of such accountability are really slim. A reminder: Obong Godswill Akpabio, Senate President, who should ask the tough questions on the unprecedented waste, was at the ground breaking of the Coastal Highway in May 2024.
Asked to make a short remark, Akpabio did not conceal his delight when he broke into a song, ‘Things are getting better since Ashiwaju got into office’.
Embarrassed, a rare occurrence for Akpabio, he ended the song abruptly when he discovered he was the only one who knew the lyrics of his unique song.
The good thing about the Coastal Highway is that it will become a central route to Tinubu’s exit from office.
…Too scared to campaign
BOLA Ahmed Tinubu, the man who unashamedly led Nigerians from an uncertain doom to a certain disaster, is suddenly too scared to stand before Nigerians who he claims love him, to account for how he turned their lives upside down since 2023 with the enormous resources available to him.
Tinubu at the inauguration of his second term campaign council surrendered his presidency to a mishmash of assumed trusted ones who are already fighting for their personal political survival. They are seeing beyond Tinubu’s fading influence.
Obong Godswill Akpabio, Senate President, in his remarks at the inauguration poked Imo State Governor Hope Uzodinma, who is the Secretary of Tinubu’s campaign, for filing papers to run for the Senate. Akpabio advised Uzodinma to finish his governorship instead of searching for a non-existent opportunity in the Senate.
The story has been abroad that Uzodinma wants to be the next Senate President, Akpabio’s plum seat. Akpabio believes his party will win the majority and that his colleagues will vote for him.
During the week, a motion was passed at the Senate that Akpabio should continue as Senate President in 2027. And this is an election which Akpabio is unsure of winning or how many of his colleagues would return.
How will Akpabio defeat Senator Abdulaziz Yari, the former Governor of Zamfara State, the Director-General of President Bola Tinubu’s Presidential Campaign Council who has not stopped campaigning since he lost the Senate presidency in 2023?
Are these not the ones Tinubu expect to sell him to Nigerians after he excused himself from campaigns.
Tinubu said he would be too busy talking to foreign investors, discussing with creditors, possibly bandits to afford the time for campaigns.
Where Tinubu will campaign, called “visibility” in the ruling party’s lingo:
.North-West: Kaduna, Sokoto, Kano. Zamfara State, where Senator Yari was Governor, will not enjoy Tinubu’s visibility.
.North-East: Maiduguri, Bauchi, Yola.
.South-West: Ibadan and Lagos. With all his show-boating at the campaign inauguration, Osun State Governor Jackson Adeleke did not attract Tinubu.
.South-South: Port Harcourt, Asaba. What can one say of Edo State? A promise of 3.5 million votes for Tinubu between Governor Monday Okpebholo and the irascible state chairman Jarret Tenebe who has promised Ak-47 fire power on whoever stands on his way to deliver the votes to Tinubu, is not on the presidential itinerary. Let us note that the total number of Edo’s registered voters by 6 October 2026, according to INEC, is 2.86 million.
.South-East: Enugu. Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State, his supposed high party ranking apart, saw Tinubu choose Nyesom Wike over him. Tinubu will be in Port Harcourt but not Owerri, a pointer to the fractious campaign structure Tinubu will run.
.North-Central: Jos. Only Jos is considered safe enough for Tinubu’s presence. What an irony.
After a first term with miserably indefensible results, Tinubu is afraid to face Nigerians to account for his stewardship. He has ducked under excuses of governance to avoid making campaign appearances where he has learnt Nigerians are waiting to tell him off.
The boos each time his convoy passes must have started reaching him. Even when he returns from his journeys at night, as he did from Paris, people lined the streets booing him. Remarkably, the most recent incident was in Tinubu’s Lagos.
The ever absent, always distant President is asking for a second term by proxy. People will make promises on his behalf while he has never kept a promise he made.
People will defend, on his behalf, the ineptitude and hardship Tinubu has visited on Nigerians. He is too arrogant to apologise.
Only Tinubu can engage in this gamble. Of course, he realises he has failed. He now hides from the people who he has long punished with ill-thought out policies dressed in fake Chicagoan drawls.
Tinubu is scared of 16 January 2027. He never imagined it would come so quickly and with many questions that he cannot answer.
ISIGUZO is a major commentator on minor issues
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