Nigeria’s Minister of Works, David Umahi, has said there is no single engineering design covering the entire 750-kilometre Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, explaining that detailed designs, environmental studies and soil investigations are being undertaken section by section as the project progresses.
Speaking in an interview with ARISE News Anchor Ojy Okpe, Umahi said misconceptions about the nature of the project had fuelled questions over its alignment, cost and environmental approvals.
“There is no one single design for the 750 km of Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway,” Umahi said.
He explained that what existed before the Tinubu administration commenced construction was essentially a concept for a coastal route, rather than a completed engineering design for every kilometre between Lagos and Calabar.
“What was done in 2006 was a concept,” the minister said, explaining that the route had been gazetted but still required detailed engineering work before individual sections could be constructed.
According to Umahi, the government consequently carries out the necessary environmental and engineering studies for each section before proceeding with construction.
“You have to do the ESIA, you have to do the soil investigation, you have to do the engineering design,” he said.
Umahi said this section-by-section approach also meant that the government could not simply take the cost of the portion currently under construction in Lagos and multiply it across the entire 750 kilometres to arrive at a definitive cost for the highway.
He rejected claims that the entire project would cost about ₦15 trillion, questioning the basis on which such a figure had been calculated.
“Who fixed the ₦15 trillion?” Umahi asked, arguing that the terrain, engineering requirements and structures differ substantially from one section of the highway to another.
The minister said the Federal Government was procuring the project in sections and could therefore only determine costs as individual sections were designed and approved.
He pointed to the engineering differences already identified along the route, including bridges and difficult terrain, as evidence that a uniform per-kilometre cost could not reasonably be applied across the entire highway.
Umahi also addressed questions surrounding the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment for the project, insisting that an ESIA did not have to be completed as a single document covering all 750 kilometres before construction could begin.
“There is no single ESIA for the entire 750 kilometres,” he said, explaining that provisional environmental assessments are undertaken for the relevant sections before work begins, with the process continuing as designs are finalised.
That phased approach is consistent with an explanation given by Minister of State for Environment Iziaq Salako in an ARISE News interview in May 2024. Salako said at the time that because of the length of the highway, environmental certification would be undertaken in phases and that preliminary approval had been issued for initial works.
Umahi said Section One now had its full environmental assessment and maintained that the government was complying with the required environmental processes as construction progressed.
The minister’s explanation comes amid renewed scrutiny of the highway’s route through the Niger Delta following controversy over whether portions of the original coastal alignment had been abandoned in favour of the existing East-West Road.
The Federal Government has since insisted that the 750km alignment remains intact and that the proposed reconstruction of about 400 kilometres of the East-West Road is an additional project rather than a replacement for the Coastal Highway. It has also said survey and design work remains underway on outstanding portions through Edo, Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers.
Umahi similarly insisted in the interview that the Coastal Highway remained a 750-kilometre project despite the fact that detailed designs for all portions were not completed simultaneously.
He said the government’s approach was to design, procure and construct individual sections as the necessary engineering and environmental work was completed.
Demola Ojo
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