A frontline businessman, Otunba Tolani Oladipo, has said the N15.6tn Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, being built by Gilbert Chagoury’s Hitech Construction Limited, will help President Bola Tinubu to achieve his vision of making Nigeria a trillion-dollar economy by 2030.
In a statement on Sunday, Tolani responded to former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s critique of the project. In his recent memoir, ‘Nigeria: Past and Future,’ Obasanjo said the highway, conceived more than 50 years ago, was wasteful and corrupt.
The former president’s critique has attracted a deluge of criticisms from The Presidency and Ohanaeze Ndigbo, among others, which felt the project is a legacy project that would expand the nation’s economy and give jobs to many Nigerians.
Tolani joined the fray against Obasanjo and said the highway would be a blessing rather than a course, explaining, “By the time it is finished, this highway will shorten travel time between the Southwest and South-South by more than 35%, and is projected to add $45 billion to Nigeria’s economy in its first five years.”
He pointed out that the immediate beneficiary was Lagos State, which he said had already gained $2 billion in Gross Domestic Product.
Saying infrastructure was the backbone of GDP and development, Tolani emphasised that Lagos’ $259 billion economy, second to Cairo in Egypt, was on the back of its network of socio-economic facilities, explaining that it made the nation’s commercial capital city account for 55 per cent the country’s GDP despite being 15 per cent of Nigeria’s population.
He stated, “Lagos’ infrastructure is its mainstay. Eko Atlantic City alone is worth $6 billion conservatively and has saved Victoria Island, Ikoyi, and Lekki from the onslaught of the Atlantic Ocean and much annual flooding.
“Now, fifty years after it was conceived, the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway is finally becoming a reality. And already it has added over $2 billion to Lagos State’s GDP.
“If you look at the infrastructure that has made parts of Lagos one of the most expensive real estates on earth, they have the imprimatur of Hitech Construction Company on it.”
The business tycoon said while he understood the former president’s misgivings about the project, he noted that not all his fears about Nigeria would materialise.
For instance, he said, the former president’s belief that none of Nigeria’s refineries would ever work had been proved wrong as the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries had started producing.
“I appeal to our dearly beloved former President to realise that the Muhammadu Buhari regime has gone and this is the Bola Tinubu era. We have as President a man who under promises and over delivers,” he said.
Tolani said the coastal highway was progressing, stretching to Ondo as of today, stating that the landmark called for celebration not lamentation.
However, he said if the former president had proof of corruption in the contract award for executing the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway by Hitech Construction, he should do the public service and make such evidence public.
He said, “Our leader may want to understand that the project, when completed, will make President Tinubu wildly popular, and as such, his political opponents will stir the hornet’s nest and make claims of corruption, etc.
“And so, without evidence, our leader, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, may want to take what he is told with a pinch of salt.”
He said Hitech Construction had a good record of building fifty-year warrantied concrete roads, contending that the company should be judged by its past, not on the false allegations.
