Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has criticized the ₦15.6 trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project, calling it wasteful and corrupt.
He also condemned the Bola Tinubu administration for allocating ₦21 billion to build a new official residence for Vice President Kashim Shettima, describing it as a misplaced priority and a scheme to siphon public funds.
Obasanjo expressed these views in chapter six of his new book, Nigeria: Past and Future, where he analyzed the leadership styles of executives at both federal and state levels.
The book was one of two unveiled last week to mark his 88th birthday.
Minister of Works, David Umahi, had stated that the 700km highway would cost ₦4.93 billion per kilometer and was awarded through a counterpart-funding arrangement rather than a Public-Private Partnership.
So far, ₦1.06 trillion has been released for the pilot phase, covering six percent of the project, which starts at Eko Atlantic and ends at the Lekki Deep Sea Port.
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Several prominent Nigerians, including the 2023 PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, have raised concerns over the Federal Government’s decision to award the contract to Gilbert Chagoury’s Hitech Construction Company without a competitive bidding process.
Chagoury is known to be a long-time business associate and ally of President Tinubu.
Reflecting on Tinubu’s two years in office, Obasanjo claimed that the pattern of short-changing Nigeria’s over 230 million citizens remains unchanged, stating that governance is now seen as purely transactional, with the mindset of “It is my turn to chop.”
He further criticized the nation’s leadership, arguing that many who attain positions as governors, presidents, ministers, and local government chairmen are ill-prepared, self-serving, and primarily focused on personal enrichment, leaving Nigeria trapped in poverty and underdevelopment.
According to Obasanjo, most office-seekers are more interested in using their positions for financial gain, often securing massive loans to fund their campaigns with the expectation of repaying them using public funds once in office.
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He stated, “How do you explain the situation of a chief executive, a governor, whose business was owing the banks billions of naira and millions of dollars before becoming a governor and within two years of becoming governor, without his company doing any business, he paid all that his businesses owed the banks.
“You are left to guess where the money came from. Having got away with that in the first term, he consigned to himself almost half of the state resources in the second term. He was a typical example of the goings-on at that level almost universally in the country with only a few exceptions.
“State resources are captured and appropriated to themselves with a pittance to staff and associates to close the mouths of those that could blow the whistle or raise alarm against them while in office and when they are out of office.’’
He further noted that “The ones that are criminally ridiculous are the chief executives that deceive, lie and try to cover up on the realities and truth of action and inaction on contract awards, agreements, treaties, borrowings and forward sales of national assets. Such chief executives are unfit for the job they find themselves in.
“Typical examples of waste, corruption and misplaced priority are the murky Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road on which the President had turned deaf ears to protests and the new Vice-President’s official residence built at a cost of N21bn in the time of economic hardship to showcase the administration hitting the ground running and to show the importance of the office of the Vice-President. What small minds!”
To tackle some of the country’s challenges, the former President emphasized the need to examine the Western liberal democracy currently in practice and explore ways to adapt it to better align with Africa’s unique circumstances.
“If the West, from where the liberal democracy started should complain about it not working well for them, we should be wise enough at this stage to interrogate, carry out introspection, internal analysis and realise that Western liberal democracy is not working for us and is not delivering apart from the shortcomings of the operators.
“We should seek democracy within African history, culture, attributes and characteristics, one that will take necessary African factors into consideration. Until we can get a better word or description for it, let us call it Afrodemocracy.
“It is from Afrodemocracy that we will draw up an African people’s constitution for any African that chooses to go the way of Afrodemocracy, which will avoid most, to all, the faults we have found in Western liberal democracy,” he suggested.
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