The Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) has demanded the release of approved plans for the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway, warning President Bola Tinubu that any diversion away from four Niger Delta states could damage his re-election prospects.
In a report broadcast by Arise News, the council challenged suggestions that the highway might leave its coastal alignment and connect with the existing East–West Road from Ondo State. It said such a change would deny communities in Edo, Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers the route they had expected.
Works Minister David Umahi has rejected claims that the government intends to replace the coastal highway. His ministry says a proposed reconstruction of 400 kilometres of the East–West Road will proceed as a separate intervention, alongside the coastal project.
The council presented its demands at a press conference in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, on Thursday, 15 October. Its national president, Doubra Okotete, led the briefing at Ijaw House.
Prime 9ja Online reports that the IYC wants Tinubu to direct Umahi to retain the corridor it says the Federal Executive Council approved. It also asked the government to publish the designs and engineering drawings for the full 750-kilometre highway to address uncertainty about its passage through the region.
The council paired its request for documents with a demand for construction to begin in the four states. It said “the contractor should be directed to commence work immediately”, identifying the Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta and Edo sections as requiring action.
Its position was that work in those states should accompany activity elsewhere on the route, including the Lagos–Ondo and Cross River–Akwa Ibom sections. The group maintained that assurances about the project’s intended reach had not settled its concerns about implementation.
The IYC also disputed the cost and terrain arguments attributed to Umahi. It said the difficulty of building through the Niger Delta should not justify taking the highway away from its proposed coastal corridor.
Pointing to construction through Lagos’s Atlantic coastline and lagoons, the council argued that similar determination should guide the government’s approach to other parts of the route. It challenged suggestions that engineering obstacles made the original alignment impracticable.
Rejecting that explanation, it argued that “what is needed is not engineering but a political will”.
Its argument also centred on the region’s contribution to public revenue. The IYC claimed that the South-South produced more than 85 per cent of the nation’s wealth and said the oil and gas resources from the region helped finance infrastructure elsewhere in Nigeria.
On that basis, it rejected the suggestion that building through the region was too expensive. The council argued that the government should account for the area’s contribution to national finances when deciding how to fund and execute the highway.
The group connected those demands to the 2027 elections, warning that an alteration which denied the four states their expected coastal road would carry political consequences for Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC).
In the Arise News report, speakers at the gathering said the president risked losing support in the affected states if the project failed to reach them as expected. The warning accompanied the council’s appeal for Tinubu to intervene directly in the dispute.
The Federal Ministry of Works, however, has maintained that the original coastal highway remains in place. In its clarification reported by Arise News on 12 October, the ministry said the additional East–West Road reconstruction would neither replace sections of the coastal project nor alter its alignment.
A statement signed by the ministry’s Director of Highway Bridges and Design, Musa Saidu, on Umahi’s directive, distinguished the two projects. It described the East–West Road work as an additional route from Edo to Cross River.
Tinubu formally launched construction of the coastal highway in Lagos on Sunday, 26 May 2024. The project is intended to connect states along Nigeria’s southern coastline, linking Lagos with Calabar.
Arise News reported that a roughly 47-kilometre stretch in Lagos had been completed and opened temporarily to motorists. The council’s demands concern the continuation of the highway beyond sections where construction has already advanced.
Umahi has said survey and design teams are working on the remaining corridor from the Ondo end through Edo, Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers towards Akwa Ibom. The ministry says procurement and construction on those sections will follow completion of that technical work.