Many years ago, after driving along Highway 101, otherwise known as the Pacific Coast Highway, along the California-Washington corridor in the Western United States, I asked myself why Nigeria did not have such a highway running along our 700+ kilometers of coastline. The Pacific Coast Highway runs about 1,650 miles (about 2,655 kilometers). The Highway is known as Highway 1 to the South up to the Mexican border and Highway 101 to the North up to the Canadian border. Apart from the sea breeze and breath-taking views of the Pacific Ocean along the way, travellers get to see scenic views and visit numerous historical sites, relaxation points with eateries, and forest walk trails. The Highway and its points of attraction bring in millions of tourists and regular travellers every year and billions of dollars to the economies of the states along the route.
I was happy when the Goodluck Jonathan administration seemed to provide a much-awaited answer to my question by initiating the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway along the Atlantic (Gulf of Guinea) corridor. The project would connect nine Southern states, namely, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Edo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa-Ibom, and Cross-River, exposing them to unprecedented tourism and bubbling economic activities. My hope was dashed when nothing came of it, only to be raised again when the Mohammed Buhari administration began paper and verbal work on the coastal road. As usual, nothing concrete happened. Nevertheless, that administration provided some foundation for the succeeding administration to build on.
It is against this background that I expected President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to be congratulated for bringing the project to the limelight to the point of even commencing on its first phase. Instead, three major criticisms have surfaced, some genuine but others baseless. Questions about transparency and cost are in order but questions about procurement are red herring as adequately pointed out by the Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi, an engineer of repute. The cost of the project, he argued on an Arise TV interview, was informed by costs of materials in similar road projects being handled simultaneously in other parts of the country, while skills and track record were used to award the contract to Chargoury’s Hitech Construction Company Limited, just as the Third Mainland Bridge was awarded to Julius Berger for similar reasons.
In the manner of his Chicago certificate trip during the presidential election, the PDP candidate and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, embarked on a smear campaign against the project and even against the person of the President. Oh, he is Chargoury’s business partner, because his son, Seyi Tinubu, is on the Board of a subsidiary company, which manufactures ceramic tiles and sanitary towels. It does not matter to Atiku whether the fellow had been on the Board before his father became President.
Perhaps the most critical question raised is about the cost of the project, especially at this time of the nation’s economic downturn. What these critics fail to realise is that it is at such times in US history that the government spends the most money, especially on infrastructure and economic bailout for banks, factories, and struggling citizens. The lessons of the Great Depression (1929-1939) may have been lost or even unknown to many Nigerian politicians today. However, those among them, who read, would have learned that President Franklin D. Roosevelt developed programs to bail out failing banks and industries as well as pass the National Labour Relations Act of 1935. Above all, the government invested in infrastructure in order to strengthen roads and bridges and thus prepare the nation for heavy loads that may come with economic recovery.
Perhaps a better example that many Nigerian politicians may be familiar with is the Great Recession, which heralded in the Barrack Obama administration in 2008. Tinubu’s administration began in 2023 in similar circumstances, although the causes of the recession varied from one country to the other. For example, in the US, the burst in the housing bubble led to decline in the mortgage market and caused many banks to go under. However, here in Nigeria, our banks were feeding fat on consumers and even on the government, while the economy was heavily depressed. Or how does one explain trillions of Naira in profits by Nigerian banks just as the economy entered one of its worst recessions?
What is important here, however, is the similarity in the economic recovery approaches. In the US, Obama engaged in huge infrastructure funding in order to get more people back to work, ease transportation, and create economic opportunities along the road network value chain. Besides, he invested heavily in bailing out banks and the auto industry. He also provided support for those who could not meet their mortgage obligations and paid unemployment benefits to those who were laid off at work due the recession. That was the American version of palliative.
President Joe Biden (then Obama’s Vice President) followed the same template to aid recovery from the downturn in the economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, by paying directly to seniors on Social Security benefits and those who were laid off. He also passed a huge infrastructure bill for the same reasons Obama did.
Here at home, President Tinubu is using a time-tested template to revive the economy. Interestingly, the stressors in the Nigerian economy are more varied and more serious than those of the US economy during Obama’s time. Here at home, we have different small fractions of the population feeding fat on the majority. Hence the need to stop fuel subsidy, harmonise the foreign exchange market, improve labour conditions, attend to the poor masses, cut back on electricity subsidy, while also working to improve electricity supply, and, above all, improve the transportation network.
A common denominator in the recession recovery efforts mentioned above is heavy investment in road infrastructure, and that is what President Tinubu has embarked upon. He got work resumed on the East-West Road and many other highways, which some critics mischievously claimed he had abandoned. One Peter Obi, for example, advised focusing on inland roads, omitting that President Tinubu is already doing so, and criticising him for embarking on the coastal highway, without highlighting the huge advantages of such a venture. Others criticise the choice of Lagos as the starting point. Haba! Isn’t Lagos on one end of the coastline? And what better end to start than the economic hub of the nation?
Of course, it will take years to complete the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, but it has to be started, just as the other roads President Tinubu inherited were started by previous administrations.
