The Road Before the Plan

More than two years after the first concrete was poured, Works Minister David Umahi admits the 750-kilometre Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway has no single master design. Six Nigerians along the route, and the scraps of information that reach them, show why that matters.

By Nkanu Egbe · October 2026

The six people in this story are composites, drawn from the kinds of people the project touches. Every fact about the project itself is sourced.

Six people, one road

Kehinde Bakare learnt about the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway from a can of red paint. In early 2024 a large “X” appeared on the wall of the house he had built in Okun-Ajah. Everything he has learnt since has come through a WhatsApp group of displaced property owners, swapping rumours about compensation.

Twelve kilometres west, Ifeoma Nwosu, a 29-year-old product designer, gets her news from her X timeline. She drives the finished stretch from Lekki to Victoria Island most mornings, and it has cut her commute sharply. She also scrolls past videos of flooded service lanes and a minister promising that everything is on schedule.

On the Ogun section, Segun Adebayo, a site supervisor, watches dredgers pump sand into swamp and waits weeks for it to settle. He learns about route changes when the pegs move. Further east, in the coastal Ilaje country of Ondo State, Funmilayo Akinruntan, who smokes fish for the Okitipupa market, hears on community radio that the road may now turn inland before it reaches her shoreline.

In Yenagoa, Ebikabowei Tonye, a 34-year-old Ijaw youth leader, saw a clip of Donald Duke on Arise Television shared on WhatsApp. Duke said the road could not be built through Bayelsa’s swamps. Ebikabowei’s governor said otherwise. He does not know whom to believe. In Calabar, Effiong Bassey, a retired civil servant of 63, served under Duke when he was governor. He has seen the dredgers at the Calabar end. His grandchildren ask him when the road will reach Lagos. He has no answer.

None of the six has seen a map of the final route. None knows what the road will cost. As it turns out, neither does the government.

The red herring that wasn’t

In August, Duke, now the Peoples Redemption Party’s presidential candidate, told Arise Television the coastal highway was a misplaced priority the country could not afford. “You cannot build a road on the coast from Lagos to Calabar,” he said, predicting it would not go beyond Epe.

The rebuttals were swift. Tope Ajayi, the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, said Duke was “arguing against reality”: work had already reached Ogun, with sections under way in Ondo and Akwa Ibom. He dismissed the PRP as an unviable platform. Bayelsa’s Governor Douye Diri said his state had built roads across swamps and mangroves, insisting the highway was buildable and possible.

Taken literally, the Epe remark has been overtaken: work is well past Lagos. Duke says that misses his point. He told Lagos Metropolitan that Epe was symbolic: a project the country cannot afford risks being abandoned wherever the money runs out. In October, two disclosures from the minister himself gave that warning new weight. The road would be rerouted in Ondo because of difficult terrain. And there was no master design for the whole corridor.

“No one single design”

At a media engagement in Abuja last week, Umahi was asked directly whether an engineering design covered the whole highway. “There’s no one single design,” he replied. The road, he explained, is being designed and costed section by section as work advances.

The idea is old. Umahi said the route was first conceived in 1955 and gazetted as a concept in 2006. But he told reporters he had found no complete engineering design, subsoil investigation or detailed technical documentation for the whole corridor in the ministry’s archives, according to Newsquest.

He also confirmed that construction began on a provisional Environmental and Social Impact Assessment certificate, with the final one to follow as work progressed. “Every project has provisional ESIA,” he said. Final environmental approval, by his account, covers only the first 47 kilometres.

And he turned on the most quoted figure in the debate. Using the 47.47km Lagos section, which he put at about ₦1.06 trillion, he worked out roughly ₦7.5 billion per kilometre once its extra carriageways are adjusted for. He rejected the ₦15 trillion estimate for the whole road, asking who had fixed that number.

For Kehinde in Okun-Ajah, the admission lands hard. His house came down for a road whose full shape, by the minister’s own account, had not been worked out.

From a 1955 idea to a 2024 contract

Major public works are normally conceived, studied, costed and authorised before anyone announces them. The coastal highway reached the public the other way round.

In September 2023, Umahi said Gilbert Chagoury’s Hitech Construction had the money to build the road as a public-private partnership: build, toll, then hand back. That account, recalled by ThisDay’s editorial board and by Atiku Abubakar, did not last. By early 2024 the model had become EPC+F: engineering, procurement and construction, with financing.

• 1955Coastal route first conceived, according to Umahi
• 2006Concept gazetted
• September 2023Umahi says Hitech has the money; project framed as a PPP
• February 2024Federal Executive Council approves the project for Hitech
• March 2024Construction begins at the Lagos end
• April 2024Demolitions begin, including Landmark Beach
• May 2024President Tinubu flags off the 700km highway
• May 2025First 30km of Section 1 commissioned
• July 2025$747m syndicated loan for Section 1 announced
• August 2026Duke’s Arise interview; Presidency rebuts
• October 2026Ondo realignment defended; “no single design” admission

When FEC approved the project, Umahi said the first phase was a 47.47km stretch with five lanes in each direction and a train track in the middle. The older Niger Delta Development Commission plan had been a four-lane road. The scope more than doubled before a corridor-wide design existed.

How Hitech got the job

The contract was not openly tendered. Umahi has given his own account. He says the law allows restrictive, selective and open procurement. For Section 1, the ministry sought firms owning up to five concrete pavers, then a rarity in Nigeria. It ran a restrictive tender, which the Bureau of Public Procurement and FEC reviewed and passed. Section 2 went to selective bidding, which Hitech won. “We have not gone outside the law,” he said.

Critics read the law differently. Moving a motion in the House of Representatives, Austine Achado argued the strategy may have breached section 40(2) of the Public Procurement Act 2007. That section permits restrictive tendering only where few contractors can do the work, and requires all of them to be invited. He also cited the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission Act, which requires infrastructure projects to be advertised for open bidding before any direct negotiation. The House resolved to investigate.

Funso Doherty, now the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) governorship candidate in Lagos, went to court in 2024 against the Attorney-General, the Bureau of Public Procurement and Hitech. He asked for the award of the first two sections to be declared unlawful and void, and for construction to stop until the procurement and environmental laws were followed.

The central question has never been publicly answered: how many companies met the five-paver test? If only one did, a restrictive tender was a single-source award by another name.

Who is paying

The contractor was meant to bring the money. Today, nearly every naira that can be traced comes from the federal budget or from loans raised in Nigeria’s name.

That was built in early. At the FEC approval, Umahi proposed that the government fund phase one itself, with later sections under EPC+F for Hitech. In 2024 he put the government’s share at about 30 per cent, with Hitech sourcing the rest. Atiku later quoted the minister as saying Hitech could raise only 6 per cent for the pilot phase.

The $747 million loan was arranged by Deutsche Bank with Afreximbank, First Abu Dhabi Bank, the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development, Zenith Bank and others. The Islamic Corporation for the Insurance of Investment and Export Credit described its cover as sovereign risk: it protects lenders against the risks of lending to Nigeria. That is the language of public debt, not contractor finance.

The arithmetic raises an obvious question. Section I is a ₦1.068 trillion contract. It drew on ₦700 billion of appropriation and a $747 million loan, worth more than ₦1 trillion when signed. How were the two applied? Meanwhile, the Works Ministry told lawmakers it owes contractors about ₦2.2 trillion for certified work across all its projects.

In Calabar, Effiong puts it simply: if the government is borrowing, the government is paying, and so are his grandchildren.

The numbers that keep moving

Almost every headline figure for the project has changed, often in the minister’s own words.

Without a master design, none of these figures can be checked against a baseline. Ifeoma, the designer, sums it up: “In my job, we don’t quote a client before we’ve drawn the thing.”

The route that keeps moving

The first change came in Lagos. In May 2024, Umahi announced a realignment at Okun-Ajah to avoid damaging the submarine cables that land there. By then the demolitions further west had already begun.

The bigger change is in Ondo. Petitions alleged the project had been diverted there. Umahi answered that the realignment was needed because of difficult terrain. “We have no regret for decisions taken at Ondo,” he said. He added that President Tinubu had approved carrying the highway on through the existing East–West Road rather than cutting a new alignment from Ondo into Edo, raising that road by two metres in many places to clear flood levels.

Within days the Presidency appeared to walk this back. It said the 400km East–West Road reconstruction was an additional project, and the original coastal alignment remained intact. Umahi has also insisted the 750-kilometre highway “cannot be changed”. But, as ThisDay noted, the clarification offered no detailed map of the final alignment.

That silence is what Funmilayo in Ilaje and Ebikabowei in Yenagoa are living with. Their communities have waited decades for a coastal road; the Ijaw National Congress has called for one since the 1990s, Governor Diri noted. If the road turns inland at Ondo, the swamps Duke said could not be crossed may simply never be tried.

There is also the question of where it starts. Duke asked why a Lagos-to-Calabar road begins at Victoria Island, beside Eko Atlantic, rather than at Badagry, where Lagos meets the western border. No official answer has been given.

Demolish first, settle later

In May 2024, Umahi said 750 houses on the route had been marked for demolition. The first compensation, ₦2.75 billion, was paid that month. The Section 1 compensation budget later rose from ₦8 billion to ₦18 billion.

Landmark Beach, demolished from 29 April 2024, says it was not consulted on the alignment or the environmental assessment. It has put its loss at ₦42 billion. Umahi has said Landmark has no claim to the 250-metre shoreline. At a protest at the ministry’s Lagos offices, lawyer Tahir Ahmad said diaspora investors had put up to $250 million into Okun-Ajah, and that many affected owners were still unpaid.

By the government’s own count, 27 court cases were filed against it over the project. Its legal team leader, Owonikoko SAN, said seven major ones had been won and most of the rest settled out of court.

Kehinde is in the WhatsApp group of those still waiting. He says each new announcement about the road reaches him before any word about his money.

The environmental picture is no clearer. Building on a provisional certificate means the assessment ran alongside construction instead of shaping the route. The consequences surfaced in August 2026, when heavy rain and flooding in Lagos prompted the ministry to add service lanes and secondary drainage to Sections 1 and 2. Ifeoma had already seen the videos.

What has been built

The road is not imaginary. President Tinubu commissioned the first 30km of Section 1 in May 2025. In August 2026, Umahi said Section 1 was complete, Section 2 more than 80 per cent done, and more than 30 per cent of the work in Calabar and Akwa Ibom finished. He has said Section 2 should be complete by mid-November, with Sections 4A and 4B, about 65km across Ogun and Ondo, under way.

The pavement is continuously reinforced concrete, a long-life choice suited to wet ground. Segun on the Ogun section describes the work as fast and heavy: sand filling, stone base, then a wait for the ground to firm before the concrete goes down. Umahi has described the same process when answering claims that finished sections had failed.

For commuters like Ifeoma, the benefit is real. A BusinessDay contributor reported journeys on the coastal road averaging about 30 minutes. International lenders also did their own checks before backing Section 1.

The road is real. The plan for the rest of it is not yet visible.

At what cost to everything else?

The hardest question about the highway is not whether it can be built. It is what Nigeria gives up to build it this way.

The federal government is stretched. The 2026 budget runs a deficit of ₦23.85 trillion. Public debt stood at about ₦159 trillion at the end of 2025, and analysts expect debt service to keep consuming 50 to 60 per cent of revenue. Health gets about 4.2 per cent of the 2026 budget and education about 6.1 per cent, well below international benchmarks.

The contrast with the coastal highway is stark. In 2025 the government said it would release only 30 per cent of the capital budget and roll the rest into 2026. Ministries reported receiving scraps: about 1 per cent of Transportation’s capital vote, 2 per cent of Housing’s, 1.5 per cent of Water Resources’. The Health Minister, Muhammad Ali Pate, disclosed that of ₦218 billion appropriated for health capital projects in 2025, only ₦36 million was released. Indigenous contractors say they are owed more than ₦4 trillion for 2024 work.

Over roughly the same period, the coastal highway drew ₦2.23 trillion, the largest single infrastructure allocation in the government’s own scorecard.

The government has an answer. It says subsidy removal and exchange-rate unification freed ₦15.8 trillion, and that roads are the backbone of security and growth. Capital spending has risen from about 27 per cent of the budget in 2023 to more than 47 per cent in 2026. A finished highway, its defenders argue, earns its keep for 50 years.

But that case assumes the road is planned, costed and completed. Without a master design, the final bill is unknown, and every rise in it competes with hospitals, schools and contractors already unpaid. A “legacy” project with a political deadline, and a minister who has “no regrets” about rerouting it, creates a strong incentive to keep paying whatever it takes. That is the risk Duke was pointing to with Epe.

The figures cannot prove motive. They do show priority: when money was scarcest, this road was paid first.

Is that recklessness? Funmilayo in Ilaje, whose nearest clinic waits on the same treasury, may reasonably ask who decided that, and on what evidence.

Was Duke right?

Duke is a presidential candidate, and the Presidency called his critique politically motivated. His claims still deserve checking on their merits.

Effiong, who worked under Duke in Calabar, says he never took him for an engineer. “But he could always count,” he says.

A good road, a reversed process

Measured against standard practice for major infrastructure, the coastal highway was run in reverse. The political decision and the contractor came first. Design, costing, environmental clearance and funding followed, section by section.

Phased delivery of a long corridor, each section designed just before it is built, is a recognised method. What is unusual is announcing a contractor, a ten-lane specification and a ₦15 trillion price before any corridor-wide study existed to support them. The predictable results have followed: a route rerouted after work began, drainage added after flooding, a funding model rewritten three times, and compensation disputes after demolition.

The road, in short, is being designed as it is built.

The political question

Some critics go further. Atiku has questioned the award of the contract without competitive bidding to Chagoury’s Hitech. Transparency International publicly mocked the award. A Ripples Nigeria opinion writer called the project a slush fund wrapped in a contract. Others point to history: Hitech was part of the Lekki concession that Lagos State bought back in 2013 for ₦7.5 billion after about 20km of road.

The Presidency and Governor Diri have dismissed such criticism as political, and the government insists the procurement was lawful and transparent. The documents that would settle the matter are not public: contracts, payment certificates, the five-paver bidders list and the loan terms. Until they are, the suspicion will persist, fed by the very opacity that could dispel it.

Still waiting for the map

Along 750 kilometres of coast, six people are learning about one road in fragments: red paint, a WhatsApp forward, a radio bulletin, a peg moved overnight, a television clip, a dredger on the horizon. What none of them has received is the document a project of this size should begin with: a plan.

Kehinde wants his compensation. Ifeoma wants the drains finished. Segun wants to know which way the pegs will move next. Funmilayo wants to know whether the road is still coming to Ilaje. Ebikabowei wants the swamps tried, not skirted. Effiong wants to know whether he will see Lagos by road.

The minister has the right of reply. These are the questions.