‘Misplaced Priority’ – Obasanjo Slams Tinubu Over Lagos-Calabar Highway Project, ₦21 Billion Spent On Shettima’s Official Residence

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has criticised President Bola Tinubu over the ₦15.6 trillion spent on the Lagos-Calabar Coastal highway project.

Naijaonpoint reports that many prominent Nigerians, including the 2023 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, have questioned the Federal Government’s decision to award the contract to Gilbert Chagoury’s Hitech Construction Company without competitive bidding.

Chagoury is believed to be Tinubu’s long-time business partner and friend.

In chapter six of his new book, ‘Nigeria: Past and Future’ unveiled to mark his 88th birthday last week, Obasanjo described the Lagos-Calabar Coastal highway project as wasteful, corrupt and a misplaced priority.

The ex-president equally slammed Tinubu’s administration for spending ₦21 billion on a new official residence for Vice President, Kashim Shettima, when the country is facing economic hardship.

Assessing the two years of Tinubu in office, 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.”

According to Obasanjo, the majority of those who have been opportune to hold leadership positions in the country as presidents, governors, ministers, commissioners, even as local government chairmen are ill-prepared, satanic, self-centred and are all out to corruptly enrich themselves while the nation continues to wallow in abject poverty.

He also stated that the chief executives are criminally ridiculous, stressing that they lie and try to cover up the realities and truth of action and inaction on contract awards, agreements, treaties, borrowings and forward sales of national assets.

Obasanjo maintained that many clamouring to be governors or lead the country in one form are only interested in using their offices to enrich themselves and their cronies and leave the country worse than they met it.

He said, “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.

“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!”