Lagos-Calabar highway lacks master design — Umahi

File photo: Minister of Works, David Umahi

The Minister of Works, David Umahi, has revealed that the 750-kilometre Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway still lacks a single comprehensive engineering design, more than two years after construction started in March 2024. He said the project is being designed and costed in separate sections rather than under one master design.

Umahi, who spoke during a one-hour-30-minute interview on Arise Television monitored by our correspondent on Friday, said there was no comprehensive engineering design covering the entire highway, which the Federal Government has presented as one of President Bola Tinubu’s flagship infrastructure projects.

The disclosure comes amid persistent questions over the project’s overall cost, construction process, environmental approvals and the government’s capacity to complete the highway.

Defending the cost of the first section, the minister said one standard carriageway comprising two lanes would cost about $5.5m per kilometre (N7.3bn), based on his comparison with a coastal highway project in the neighbouring Republic of Benin.

He, however, challenged the use of an estimated average cost to calculate the cost of the entire 750km highway, arguing that the terrain, bridges and engineering requirements differed across sections.

“There is no single design of any road project that came out, you know, in reality, at the end of the project, the way it was designed,” Umahi said.

Asked directly whether there was an engineering design covering the entire Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, he replied, “So these are the procedures. There is no one single design that the 750 kilometres of Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway is holding. There’s no one single design.”

The minister said the highway had been conceived as far back as 1955, while the concept was gazetted in 2006. However, he maintained that he had not found a complete engineering design, subsoil investigation or other detailed technical documents covering the entire route in the ministry’s archives.

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According to him, engineering designs are developed for individual sections after environmental assessments and soil investigations establish the route, terrain and technical requirements.

Umahi said the Federal Executive Council-approved procurement arrangement required the project to be procured section by section, adding that the approach made it inappropriate to multiply an estimated average cost by the entire 750km.

“Who fixed this N15tn that people are just, you know, brandishing everywhere? Who fixed it? And let me also clarify that nobody has the right to do an average cost and multiply by 750,” he said.

However, the absence of a single design and comprehensive project cost raises questions about how the government intends to establish the total financial commitment, assess the highway’s overall value and communicate its completion cost to Nigerians.

Explaining his cost comparison, Umahi referred to a 47km section of the highway and a 47.47km coastal road in the Republic of Benin, which he said cost N1.06tn. He cited a figure of about N7.5bn per kilometre for a three-carriageway configuration and adjusted it to estimate the cost of a standard two-lane carriageway.

The minister put the adjusted cost at approximately $5.5m per kilometre, based on an exchange rate of N1,330 to the dollar.