By Dianabasi Effiong
The Tinubu Media Support Group (TMSG) has countered former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s criticism of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project, saying it is precisely the same as the Lagos-Ibadan expressway which he constructed as the then military head of state in 1978.
The group also said that if the Lagos-Ibadan expressway was not wasteful, the Lagos – Calabar Coastal highway should not be ignominiously dismissed as needless and wasteful as the former president wants his audience to believe.
Obasanjo had, in his latest book, described the 700-kilometre-long Lagos- Calabar legacy project of the President Bola Tinubu administration as wasteful.
However, a statement signed by TMSG’s Chairman, Emeka Nwankpa, noted that if the Lagos-Ibadan expressway was not wasteful at the time it was constructed in 1978, then the coastal highway could not be so described.
It said: “We are as shocked, jolted, and disappointed as many Nigerians to see the dismissive report on the 700-kilometre Lagos Coastal Highway attributed to former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
“The former President is said to have tagged the ongoing legacy project of the Tinubu administration as wasteful and corrupt in his latest book ‘Nigeria: Past and Future’, but we wonder how he came to this conclusion. Or is he burdened by memory loss and selective amnesia often associated with some in the twilight of age? Or is it just sheer envy by a man whose record has been incrementally eclipsed before his very eyes?
“We are forced to ask these pertinent questions because this is a project that the administration had on several occasions described as one largely funded by the contractor under an Engineering, Procurement, Construction, and Financing (EPC&F) arrangement with counterpart funding from the federal government.
“We also wonder what could make the former president describe a highway that is designed to open up coastal areas and link nine states in such a derogatory and loquacious manner.
“Besides, we see several similarities between the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, which in 1978 when it was inaugurated by then General Obasanjo, and the ongoing Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway being constructed by the highly innovative Bola Tinubu administration.
“The 127.6-kilometre-long expressway was constructed to connect Ibadan and Lagos but is today the major route to the northern, southern, and eastern parts of Nigeria. It has opened up a lot of communities along that axis to development including flourishing industrial estates in Ogun state.
“This is comparable to a Coastal Highway that will not only open up blue economic potentials and industrial value chain in the coastal communities but also reduce travel time between the nine connecting states, among other phenomenal advantages.
“Obasanjo has also criticised the completion of the official residence of the vice president. Similarly, his stance on this is most unwelcome and unexpected from a former president who, in the first place, initiated the project which successive administrations of his political party, the PDP, wasted billions on before abandoning it.
“In our view, former President Obasanjo’s position on the two issues has nothing to do with altruism. It is a reflection of his regular inelegant pastime of unnecessarily attacking sitting Presidents, a practice that has continued to reduce his worth and credibility as a statesman.”
TMSG also described as unedifying the former president’s wholesale condemnation of Nigeria’s past leadership, a trait it also described as a character defect that sticks out as a sore thumb.
The group said that while it holds elder statesmen in high esteem, Obasanjo should do more in his old age to regain his lost image and respect among Nigerians.
“It is indeed not too late for Africa’s living military leader who handed over to a democratically elected civilian government to redress and redeem his fallen image. He can do well by resisting the frequent urge to slip into further ignominy. This is so that posterity can be kind to him.
“We were indeed not surprised that the former President made a blanket condemnation of people who have held leadership positions in the country.
“This is clearly a messianic complex because how else can one describe a former leader who tagged past political office holders as ‘ill-prepared, satanic, self-centred and are all out to corruptly enrich themselves while the nation continues to wallow in abject poverty? Haba Obasanjo!’.
“But here is a man who dared to not only approve a private university for himself while he was President but also set it up at a time the nation’s public universities were shut down for a cumulative period of 18 months as a result of poor funding.
“And with the manner the former President speaks glibly about poverty in Nigeria, not many people may realize that the country’s poverty rate when he left office in 2003 was 48.4 per cent as a result of poorly thought-out policies.
“In fact, we make bold to say that some of former President Obasanjo’s policies paved the way for the exponential growth of poverty in the land and the government response at the time was to share tricycles or what is still known as Keke Napep as poverty alleviation tool when other developing countries like India and Brazil introduced social welfare schemes that pulled millions of their people out of poverty,” it added.
