Young Progressives Party, YPP has described the ongoing Lagos-Calabar coastal highway as coastal highway of corruption, charging the Federal Government to channel scarce resources into priority areas.
Gatekeepers News reports that the party in a statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Comrade Egbeola Wale Martins, said the highway is not the immediate priority of government as there are more pressing issues such as the poor state of education, health, power, spate of insecurity and poverty confronting the nation.
The statement read, “The popular quote by Stephen Covey that “the key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities” readily comes to mind at this critical moment of executive rascality due to the inability of the ruling APC government to properly schedule their priorities, especially in the midst of abject poverty made worse by the imposition of reckless and insensitive anti-masses policies.
“This project even though it is necessary, it is however not expedient, hence not the immediate priority of government as there are more pressing issues such as the poor state of education, health, power, spate of insecurity and poverty confronting the nation.
“With the array of abandoned projects such as the Ajaokuta steel project, East-West road, Lagos-Abuja supersonic highway to mention a few scattered across the country due to paucity of funds, it is therefore a mystery that the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway estimated to cost about N15.6 trillion suddenly became not only an emergency but an obsession for the Minister of Works, Engr. Dave Umahi and his boss who rather than complete existing abandoned projects are busy chasing a white elephant project that may end up being abandoned like others before it.
“If the same urgency in which President Ahmed Bola Tinubu awarded the contract of the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway to Hitech Construction Company where his son, Seyi Tinubu is a board member coupled with the dispatch in which the initial mobilisation of N1 trillion rather than N500m captured in the budget was released had been applied in addressing the myriad of challenges in the education sector where there are over 20 million out-of-school children, the power sector where we can barely generate 4000 megawatts with the national grid collapsing every other week or fixing insecurity so that our farmers can go to farm, most of the recurring socioeconomic challenges we are currently facing would have been a thing of the past.
“It is now obvious that corruption under President Ahmed Bola Tinubu is a policy choice because while Nigerians are asked to endure hardship, leadership on the other hand is busy corruptly amassing wealth through the illegal award of contracts amounting to abuse of office, which is an impeachable offence.
“Even though it is almost impossible to halt this project, which has been hurriedly commenced suggesting a clandestine motive of rewarding family and friends, we call on the EFCC, civil society organisations, other political parties and the media as gatekeepers of the society to scale up advocacy and investigations to unravel the opaque award of this contract and ensure that all those involved in what will go down as the biggest scam since independence are prosecuted if not now but in the future under a more purposeful leadership.”
