What You Should Know About ₦15.6 Trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road
The Nigerian government, under the administration of President Bola Tinubu, has begun work on a 700-kilometer highway stretching from Lagos, the nation’s economic hub, to Calabar, crossing nine coastal states. However, this infrastructural project, which the government said will “unlock economic opportunities and open new corridors for trade, tourism, and industries,” has raised concerns about transparency and funding.
Atiku Abubakar, the Presidential candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) in the last national election, faulted the project, which will cost more than the total budget for all 36 states of the country in the 2024 Appropriation Act.
The former Vice President, in a statement signed by Atiku’s Media Office in Abuja, described the project as scandalous.
“The total budget of all 36 states of the federation for 2024 stands at about ₦14 trillion. If you add that of the FCT, the entire budget of all sub-nationals is ₦15.91 trillion. This is scandalous,” Atiku said.
History of the Project
Conceived in 2014 during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, the Lagos-Calabar coastal road was initially designed to run through 10 states with a total cost of $11.97 billion.
However, after Jonathan failed to win reelection in 2015, the project stalled. His successor, former President Muhammadu Buhari, renegotiated the project downward by $800 million to $11.1 billion in 2016. Despite this, no work was started throughout the duration of his tenure.
Ten years after the plan for constructing the road was conceived, work has commenced with the release of an initial ₦1.06 trillion. However, this amount, which is meant for the construction of the pilot phase, a distance of 47.47 kilometres from Ahmadu Bello Way, Victoria Island, to the Lekki Deep Sea Port, Ibeju-Lekki, has raised more questions on how the project will be funded.
How The Project Will Be Funded
Initially awarded to China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), the Lagos-Calabar Coastal road was expected to be a Public-Private Partnership.
However, the Minister of Works, David Umahi, in a recent media briefing, claimed that the administration of Tinubu never envisaged the project to be embarked upon under the PPP, contradicting his initial claim in September 2023 where he said that the contractor, Hitech Construction Company Ltd, will source for the funding.
“This administration never envisaged the project under Private Public Partnership. It has always been under Engineering, Procurement, Construction, and Finance, EPC. And so under this kind of arrangement, as you have on the Abuja to Makurdi road project, the federal government is required to pay a certain amount for counterpart funding,” he said.
Formerly designed as a flexible pavement with Asphalt, the road has been redesigned to be reinforced concrete using 120 millimetres of rods and 250 millimetres thickness of concrete, a feature that affected the cost of construction.
Aside the high cost involved in the undertaking, another constraint that has been raised is the potential destruction of one of Nigeria’s monumental tourist centers. Landmark Beach Resort, owned by Nigerian business mogul Paul Onwuanibe, “falls within the right of way” of the planned coastal road. Although the Lagos State government notified Onwuanibe in late March that his multimillion-dollar beach resort, which attracted about a million people in 2023, could be torn down, the Works minister clarified that only 15 meters of the shoreline and a few shanties of Landmark structures will be affected.
“What could be lost is the shoreline and the people that go to play at the shoreline, but his facilities are all intact because we reduced the corridor to 15 meters and we saw that there are no permanent structures other than a few shanties along that shoreline that are affected,” Umahi said when he appeared on Arise TV on Thursday, April 11, 2024.”
Running from Lagos to Calabar, the capital of Cross Rivers State in the country’s rich Niger Delta region, the road will be a 10-lane road with a train track in the middle. Being handled by Hitech Construction Company Ltd, a privately-owned limited liability company handling the Dangote Deep Sea Road project, the contract is expected to cost over ₦15 trillion.
But Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, is struggling with revenue generation, with the 2024 budget having a deficit of ₦9.18 trillion. With 30 percent of the 2024 budget going to debt servicing, the country’s total debt profile stands at ₦97.34 trillion according to Debt Management Office of Nigeria (DMO).
Financing such a project of magnitude has been seen to be particularly challenging. Just like the 127 km Lagos-Ibadan road, awarded for reconstruction in 2013, but is yet to be completed, the Lagos-Calabar coastal road might witness such hurdles due to funding.
