Umahi: Funding for coastal road project erroneously written as ‘Lagos-PH’ in 2025 budget

David Umahi, minister of works, says funding for the Lagos-Calabar coastal road project was included in the 2025 appropriation bill.

In December 2024, President Bola Tinubu presented a N49.7 trillion 2025 budget proposal to the national assembly.

Heads of various ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) have been appearing before the national assembly to defend their budgetary allocations.

In January, BudgIT, a civic-tech organisation that promotes transparency, said funding for the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway was not included in the 2025 appropriation bill.

The development sparked mixed reactions on social media, with many questioning the rationale behind the federal government demolishing properties to make way for the project without funding for it.

Speaking on Thursday during the inauguration of the rehabilitation of Abuja to Kaduna road, Umahi said the coastal project was erroneously written in the budget document as ‘Lagos-Port Harcourt’.

The minister said his ministry is interfacing with the national assembly to correct the mistake.

“I think there was a little error. What you have in the budget is Lagos-Port Harcourt coastal highway,” he said.

“It is supposed to be the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway. We are interfacing with the committee chairman to correct it. It is a mistake.”

Checks by TheCable show that N100,000,000 was budgeted for a line item tagged as ‘Lagos-Port Harcourt coastal highway’ with the status as ‘ongoing’.

BACKGROUND

In February 2024, the federal executive council (FEC) approved the construction of the Lagos-Port Harcourt-Calabar highway for Hitech Construction Africa, a company owned by Gilbert Chagoury.

In March 2024, the federal government commenced the construction of the highway at the Lagos axis.

In May 2024, President Bola Tinubu flagged off the 700-kilometer Lagos-Calabar coastal highway.

Umahi had said the coastal project would cost N4 billion per kilometre and that the project was never envisaged as a public-private partnership (PPP) but an engineering procurement and construction (EPC+) structure, which means that the federal government must produce counterpart funding.

Several multi-million naira properties have been destroyed by the federal government to commence the project at the Lagos axis — a development that has raised concerns and controversy.