"700 kilometers of concrete ambition, a ₦15-trillion promise of connectivity, and the crown jewel of a government determined to prove that it could build at scale. But every kilometer of its progress has also mapped the fault lines of the Nigerian state."
By
Prof. MarkAnthony Nze
Investigative Journalist | Public Intellectual | Global Governance Analyst | Health & Social Care Expert | International Business/Immigration Law Professional | Strategic & Management Economist
Executive Summary
The Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway—a 700-kilometre corridor projected to cost roughly ₦15 trillion ($11 billion)—is the most ambitious public-works project in Nigeria’s modern history. Conceived as a symbol of national renewal, it has instead revealed the structural weaknesses that haunt Nigerian governance: opaque procurement, politicized decision-making, ecological neglect, and a recurring belief that speed can substitute for scrutiny.
The twelve-part investigation, “Dave Umahi and the Highway of Lies,” traced the project from its televised debut to the fine print of its financing. It found that the Ministry of Works, led by Engr. Dave Umahi, awarded the flagship contract to Hitech Construction Co. Ltd under restrictive tendering—a legal exemption meant for rare technical monopolies but now used as default practice. Section 1 of the road, only 47 kilometers long, carries a price tag of ₦1.068 trillion, implying an average ₦21–23 billion per kilometer, among the highest road-construction costs in Africa.
Financing is equally opaque. A $747-million Deutsche Bank-led loan, guaranteed by the federal treasury, blurs the boundary between private contractor debt and sovereign liability. Repayment terms remain undisclosed, and no comprehensive cost–benefit analysis or public audit has been released. Parliament and oversight agencies acknowledge partial information; accountability disperses across institutions.
Human and environmental costs mount beneath the concrete. In Lagos’s Okun-Ajah corridor, demolitions displaced more than 12,000 people. Compensation processes were inconsistent, often undocumented, and excluded informal residents. Across the coast, mangrove ecosystems—the country’s natural flood barrier—are being buried faster than they can regenerate. The legally required Environmental Impact Assessment remains incomplete and unpublished for several sections.
Minister Umahi’s public posture compounds the opacity. In interviews he has dismissed critics as ignorant or subversive, even threatening to involve EFCC, DSS, and Interpol against dissenting investors. Such rhetoric recasts civil disputes as security matters, silencing dialogue and discouraging diaspora participation. The result is an atmosphere of fear where questioning cost becomes unpatriotic.
Behind the politics stands a longer economic alliance: the Chagoury Group, parent company of Hitech, whose projects—from Banana Island to Eko Atlantic—have defined Lagos’s private shoreline for three decades. The Coastal Highway extends that nexus from state to nation, fusing public infrastructure with private legacy.
The investigation concludes that the Coastal Highway is less an engineering enterprise than a governance mirror. It reflects a system where output eclipses oversight, where concrete becomes ideology, and where modernization is performed rather than institutionalized.
True progress now depends on a national reckoning: publication of full cost data and loan terms; independent environmental and social audits; and an open digital registry of all federal contracts. Only by replacing secrecy with structure can Nigeria transform the highway from symbol to system.
Until then, the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway will remain a triumph of motion over meaning—proof that in Nigeria, the road to progress still runs faster than the truth.
