Umahi Shames Atiku, Reveals Cost Of Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway Project

The Minister of Works, David Umahi, has said the 700 kilometres Lagos-Calabar coastal highway project will cost N2.8 trillion.

Umahi, a former Governor of Ebonyi State, said every kilometre of the highway project under construction costs N4 billion.

He stated this while reacting to the claim made by the 2023 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, that one kilometre of the road project gulps N8 billion.

Recall that Atiku had criticised the decision of the Bola Tinubu government to award the project contract to his friend’s company, Hitech, without competitive bidding.

The. former Vice President also dared the president and his administration to disclose the full cost of the Lagos-Calabar highway project.

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

Speaking with stakeholders of the project in Lagos on Thursday, the former governor also debunked claims that the project did not follow the due procurement process.

He added that the project was awarded on a counter-funding basis and not on a Public-Private Partnership as claimed.

Umahi explained that despite the increasing costs of materials in the construction industry due to commodity price inflation and supply chain disruptions, the ministry is committed to prudence, promising to reveal the true cost.

The minister confirmed that the project would be completed within eight years, stating that the four-lane carriageway’s use of concrete pavement will cost N4 billion per kilometre.

He said: “People are just building castles without knowledge and they don’t know figures, I will run the figures for you. We are going to compare the cross-section of the one the former vice president mentioned that was renegotiated for $11.1bn for 700 km.

“So you have to now ask what was there to be constructed. And what was there to be constructed is the only available design from NDDC. They had designed the entire 700 km but we are not following exactly that pattern or right of way. We have a different modification. The original design had two carriageways on each side of the road with four lanes.

“And in the middle, they did not provide for the train track. It’s just going to be a water-collecting basin. But the coastal road we are constructing has a total of 10 lanes, you know, not only that it has a total of 10 lanes, it also has what we called shoulders.

“And the total shoulders can be put at about 23 metres. So when you put the total concrete pavement we are doing, it’s about 59 metres. When you put the total flexible pavement that he quoted it’s about 23 metres.”

Speaking further, Umahi said, “And so when you run the figures, you now find out that under his calculation, it is giving you about over N19bn per kilometre. Now if you divide it by the 23 kilometres that they are doing, it is about 2.225 times a standard superhighway carriageway, which is N11.55 billion.

“Whereas what we are doing, if you divide it, you get N5.167bn, So when you now divide using our N1.067 trillion, you get about N4 billion per kilometre. If you go back to what he has quoted, you will get over N8 billion.

“So using concrete, which should be more expensive because of the kind of terrain we have, and using flexible pavement, which shouldn’t stand the coastal route, you will find out that our cost is N4bn instead of the N8 billion claimed by the former vice president.”