Lagos coastal highway: Stop the calumny campaign, Presidency tells Atiku

The Presidency has cautioned former Vice President Atiku Abubakar not to distort facts on the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway project to score cheap political points.

Abubakar asserted that President Bola Tinubu’s business ties with Gilbert Chagoury, the owner of the highway contractor Hitech Construction Company, are the only reason the Coastal Highway project is moving forward.

The former vice president, in a statement on Sunday, argued that the lack of proper notification regarding the demolition of tourist and recreational amenities, as well as other properties within the Oniru corridor, including sections of Landmark in Lagos State, to facilitate the construction of the Coastal Highway, is a key factor contributing to Nigeria’s ongoing struggle to attract foreign direct investments.

But in a counter-statement, the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, said the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) presidential candidate in the 2023 election “is fast developing a reputation for distorting and manipulating facts for his self-serving objective of discrediting the current administration.”

Onanuga said, contrary to Atiku’s claims, he is baffled by “how Seyi’s membership in the board of CDK conflicts with Hitech Construction Company’s work on the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Superhighway.”

He pointed out that Tinubu’s administration had attracted over $20 billion in foreign investments within its first year in office, including over $14 billion from Indian businesses during the president’s visit to New Delhi last August.

He cited the 415 percent surge in foreign investment in Nigeria’s stock market from N18.12 billion in Q1 2023 to N93.37 billion in Q1 2024 as an “unmistakable vote of confidence” in the administration’s economic reforms.

He said: “Alhaji Atiku has been waging an unrelenting war against this all-important and transformative project for no justifiable reasons other than bad politics.

“Atiku knows that its grand success and other projects to be unfurled, such as the Badagry-Sokoto superhighway, will be a major boost for President Tinubu and finally upend his perennial presidential ambition.

“If not blinded by political ill-will, Alhaji Atiku knows that the right thing for him to do is to applaud President Tinubu for the ambitious and audacious Lagos-Calabar Highway, which was authorised by the Federal Executive Council (FEC).