Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has criticised the N15.6 trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal highway project, describing it as a “misplaced priority.”
He also frowned upon the N21 billion approved for Vice President Kashim Shettima’s official residence, saying the two projects are products of small minds.
Obasanjo made the remarks in his book ‘Nigeria: Past and Future’ launched recently to commemorate his 88th birthday.
“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!” he said.
Assessing the two years of the Tinubu administration, Obasanjo said it appears that the game of short-changing the over 230 million Nigerians would continue because “everything is said to be transactional and the slogan is ‘It is my turn to chop.’’’
He further said the majority of those who have been opportune to hold leadership positions in the country as governors, presidents, ministers, commissioners and even local government chairmen are ill-prepared, satanic and self-centred and are all out to corruptly enrich themselves while the nation continues to wallow in abject poverty and condemnable underdevelopment.
Obasanjo also stated that many clamouring to be governors or lead the country in one form or the other are only interested in using their offices to enrich themselves and their cronies and then leave the country worse than they met it.
The former President pointed out that most office-seekers in the country would go as far as obtaining loans of billions of naira believing that paying back from the public funds after being elected won’t be a problem.
“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.
“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.
To address some of the challenges facing the country, the former President said that there is a need to interrogate the Western liberal democracy being practised and see how it could be reviewed to reflect African peculiarities.
“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 added.
Recall that the minister of works, Mr David Umahi, had previously announced that the 700km Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway would cost N4.93 billion per kilometre, explaining that the project was awarded on a counterpart-funding basis rather than a public-private partnership.
The government has already released N1.06 trillion for the pilot phase, which covers just six percent of the project, starting at Eko Atlantic and ending at the Lekki Deep Sea Port.
The project has sparked widespread criticism, with many Nigerians questioning why the contract was awarded to Gilbert Chagoury’s Hitech Construction Company without competitive bidding.
Chagoury, a known business associate of President Bola Tinubu, has long been linked to government contracts under his administration.
*With Punch report
