Yar’Adua pledged N750bn yearly for coastal highway, three other Niger Delta projects, says ex-Amnesty programme boss, Kuku

Late president backed 700km Atlantic road after Mitee report, he says

Insists Tinubu’s 750km highway must stay on the coast, not East-West road

SEVENTEEN years before President Bola Tinubu began the 750-kilometre Lagos-Calabar coastal highway, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had pledged N750 billion a year to construct a 700-kilometre Atlantic coastal road and three other Niger Delta projects, former Amnesty Programme Chairman, Honourable Kingsley Kuku, has said.

Kuku said Yar’Adua made the commitment when he proclaimed amnesty for militants on June 25, 2009, naming the coastal highway as one of four cardinal development projects for the region.

Kuku, who was Special Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on the Niger Delta, spoke on Arise News Prime Time in a right-of-reply segment on behalf of Bayelsa State governor, Senator Douye Diri, who is in a dispute with a former Cross River State governor and Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) presidential candidate, Mr Donald Duke, over the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway.

According to Kuku, the Technical Committee on the Niger Delta, chaired by Ledum Mitee, recommended the Atlantic coastal highway in 2008, and Yar’Adua accepted it.

He said that in 2009, Yar’Adua told Nigerians his government would complete the reconstruction of the East-West road, build an Atlantic coastal highway from Calabar through Warri and Benin to Igbokoda and Ore in Ondo State and through Epe to Lagos, establish new cities in the nine states of the Niger Delta, and build a Calabar-to-Lagos railway line.

“These four projects were cardinal in the mind of the former president,” he said.

“Unfortunately, death took him, but he even told the world that these four projects I am committed to. I am going to devote through the National Assembly legislation. I will devote nothing less than N750 billion per annum for the implementation of these four projects within a period of five years.”

Kuku said no government took the project up directly until President Bola Tinubu.

“He has shown political will and he said, I am going to construct Lagos-Calabar coastal highway.”

“Under President Yar’Adua and Jonathan, it was tagged the Atlantic coastal highway,” he said. “Then, it was a 700-kilometre highway. Now under President Tinubu, it is 750-kilometre highway.”

The Mitee committee’s November 2008 report, which Kuku cited, urged government to “construct a coastal road from Calabar to Benin to Igbokoda to Ore to Lagos as recommended by the Ogomudia report.”

It also recommended completing the East-West road dualisation, an East-West rail line from Calabar to Lagos and one new city in each of the nine Niger Delta states.

The amnesty proclamation itself, as published by the Amnesty Office, deals with pardon and the surrender of arms, and does not name the highway.

Kuku traced the idea further back to Nigeria’s first Minister of Finance, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh. “Taking you back all the way to 1955, the late first finance minister of this country, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, was the first person to suggest the idea of a coastal road,” he said, adding that Okotie-Eboh pushed it between 1955 and 1957, before he was killed in the January 1966 coup.

He said the road must stay on the coast and not be merged with the East-West road. “We do not want the coastal highway to pass through or align with the East-West road, because the purpose was to connect coastal communities, irrespective of cost,” he said.

He listed communities he wants it to reach, including Epe and Ibeju in Lagos; Atijere, Igbokoda and his hometown, Arogbo, in Ondo; Gbaramatu, Oporoza, Okerenkoko, Escravos and Koko in Delta; Amassoma and Brass in Bayelsa; Opobo and Bonny in Rivers; and Ibeno in Akwa Ibom, before Calabar. These, he said, are riverine communities that host the country’s oil and gas.

Responding to Duke, who said on the Arise News TV Morning Show that the road “is just not affordable” and that Nigeria was “literally borrowing” to fund the Epe stretch, Kuku said cost should not decide whether coastal communities get the road.

“Why are we talking about expensiveness of connecting these people to humanity, to civilisation? It is unfair. It is an insult to say that it will be expensive,” he said. “If you do not see terrain as a reason not to exploit their resources, the same is the reason why cost must not be an issue.”

A Ministry of Works account of a briefing by the Minister of Works, Senator Dave Umahi, on October 7, indicated President Tinubu had directed that the highway’s continuation by following the existing East-West road in parts of the Niger Delta. The ministry, in October 12, statement, said the East-West road reconstruction was “an additional project” that would not change the original alignment.