David Umahi, a former governor of Ebonyi State, is the Minister of Works. In this interview monitored on Arise Television, he speaks on road infrastructure in Nigeria, the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road project and what the Federal Government is doing to fix bad roads across Nigeria, among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU reports

How would you say that your political career has evolved?

I should I say my professional career rather than politics because I enjoy the professional aspect of my career more than the political aspect of it. But I’m grateful to God and I’m happy with what I’m doing.

It depends on what you call politics because politics is about service delivery. And I’m happy that I used my profession to deliver services to the public within the limit of my ability.

Let’s then talk about that career, which has gone from being an engineer to being the Minister of Works. You’ve been in office since August 2023, how has that been for you?

First, I’m grateful to God Almighty for the opportunity and thankful to Mr. President for the confidence and the opportunity to serve the country at a larger scale.

It is quite challenging and it’s an opportunity to be properly exposed to the challenges of Nigeria in terms of road infrastructure.

So, I’m very happy that the President gave me that ministry to serve. You know that I have quite a challenging job and when I look at my past, with gratitude to God, I’ve never failed in any challenging situation I found myself in.

So, I believe that this one will come and pass with success. I believe strongly that I’m going to succeed. First, it’s the character and content of the man that gave us this job.

A man of courage and I always say to him, you’re a divine president, judging from the way the election went; judging from the way you emerged because you surmounted a lot of obstacles, like the redesign of the Naira, scarcity of fuel, scarcity of funds, and then you emerged, meaning that at every point in time, God sends people to help the nation.

And I believe strongly that the President at this point was sent by God to help the country. And we say that with emphasis on the fact that he has made a lot of hard decisions David Umahi, a former governor of Ebonyi State, is the Minister of Works.

And there is none of these hard decisions that ever failed. So, when you ask what are the tangibles, the tangibles are very obvious. Mr. President, is reconstructing a number of our roads. There is new hope in the way we construct our roads. There is a new hope in the way we manage our roads.

There is a new hope in the critical infrastructure on the roads sector that we have embarked on. And as this interview progresses, I’ll be able to mention quite several roads and what we are doing on such roads.

What is it like for you coming from a state like Ebonyi to the federal level, where you’re trying to replicate pretty much the same thing?

I can say that it’s much bigger work. But the principle is the same because I wasn’t an office governor. I spent over 70 per cent of my time on the field.

Most of the projects in Ebonyi State were designed by me by the inspiration of God because I believe strongly that when you have your mind working for the people, God will enable you to do things you were not trained to do.

And I’ve always quoted one verse, when the people of God were building the Tower of Babel. And then God said there’s nothing the mind of a man that sets to achieve that will not be achieved. That’s why he confused them with different languages.

We should give leaders of this country the benefit of doubt. There are a lot of people like President Tinubu, who are fighting corruption without shouting

So, it’s about the passion. It’s about setting your mind on what you want to do and God will enable you to do things ordinarily you would have been unable to do.

We did a lot of things. When I look back at our international airport, I used to ask myself, how did this thing come about? I look at the mall; how did it come about?

I look at the concrete road, and it can only be by God. So, here again, it’s the same thing that’s happening. I have passion for that and I draw inspiration also from the man who is on the driving seat; Mr President.

He’s a man of courage and he has given us all the support. There’s no decision we ever took in the Ministry of Works in terms of new policies to drive his agenda that he ever reversed.

It means that we have the confidence to drive his agenda. There are no interferences. There is nobody who comes to Mr. President and says this or that. He has given us a free hand. So, anybody who wants to succeed will succeed with this kind of man.

And of course, he also has vast knowledge in infrastructural development. And you can take it from when he was the governor of Lagos State. So, we are also lucky to be following a man who has love for infrastructure because that’s a catalyst for the development of any nation.

You mentioned the use of concrete to build roads in Nigeria which is one of the innovations, which according to you will last longer and cheaper but some have challenged that assertion, suggesting that the use of concrete is much more capital intensive. What’s your response to that?

I’m not a veteran of a concrete road in Nigeria. I credit that to Mr. President. When he was governor of Lagos State, there were challenges of water tables in places like Lekki and Victoria Island. Those axes have very highwater table, so he started using what is called interlocking tiles.

This is another kind of concrete road. Today, those roads are still standing. I was in Paris and most of the roads were done with interlocking tiles. And as you go in, it will be making noise. And when people ask me, I say it’s making noise, so that you don’t sleep off while driving.

But taking it back home, we are doing a different kind of concrete road, different from interlocking. And of course, we also do feel of interlocking some of our roads, especially the roads that are not highly trafficked.

And you now say, look, the concrete road is very suitable, especially where you have high traffic, where you have a very highwater table, where you have a very poor soft structure. The use of concrete is very important and the concrete road always last more and much longer than asphalt road.

But it’s not cheaper although you have argued that in the long run, it is cheaper…

It depends on what you’re doing. The concrete roads I’m doing in some locations are much cheaper than asphalt roads. And when you are doing concrete roads in places like the riverine areas, where you do a lot of sand filling, of course, it could become more expensive.

But when you put it side by side, the question is: Are you building this road to fail? Because we have a problem of failure of our roads, we continue to condemn leaders without looking inwards at ourselves. Former President Muhammadu Buhari did not go to construct the road; people did it.

But unfortunately, I found out that it’s very difficult to get any road in this country built with asphalt that lasts up to 15 years. It’s difficult and the deferred liability period, upon which we hold contractors accountable, is only one year. And you now begin to condemn the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA);; t’s a collective responsibility.

We fought almost all segments of the society but the President because of his antecedents and experience and his exposure, backed us that the concrete road is much better in comparison. In some locations, even as we are talking, it’s cheaper than asphalt.

And again, are you constructing roads with asphalt so that even if it is cheaper, it doesn’t have a shelf life of up to 15 years. So, cost should not be much to emphasize but remember that when the Lagos-Calabar Coastal road started, there was a lot of noise about it. But I ran the figures and, in fact, at a point, they were begging me to stop.

But my accounts are very clean as far as I’m concerned. There’s an impression I want to make. I was at the Court of Appeal to deliver a paper on infrastructure and I listened to Kanu Agabi (SAN), and he’s talking about the way we de-market this country. Everybody’s talking about corruption and there is so much suspicion.

That is not good for our country. It’s not the way to fight corruption. Everything our leaders are doing must not be viewed with the eyes of corruption. You have to give the person the benefit of doubt because you have not even understood what is going on.

You can’t deny or reduce the impact that corruption has had on this country… What is corruption and does it apply to everything?

We should give leaders of this country the benefit of doubt. There are a lot of people like President Bola Tinubu, who are fighting corruption without shouting.

This is a new dimension of the criticism, because sometimes people duck in a castle without knowledge. And when you were not part of the burying of the corpse, and you want to exhume it, you may start from the legs. It’s exactly what you allude that people are saying.

But let me tell you something; the legacy projects of Mr. President are not just road projects, they include investments. And they come with a lot of economic benefits. We selected several critical roads, between nine and 15 roads per zone.

Don’t forget that we inherited 2,064 roads, a total of 19,000 kilometres, with a total cost us at that time of N13 trillion, which if you review now, will come to about N16 trillion to N20 trillion.

Now, what are we doing? Let us look at the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway. What are the benefits? As of today, taking one aspect, the Apapa Wharf, we have a very shallow Wharf there, that the big ship cannot berth there.

So, we spend a lot of dollars daily to trans-load cargoes but with this road now connecting the Apapa Wharf, then down to Lekki, where we have the deep-sea port being built right now, it becomes very easy for the ship to come straight and berth there.

And we are saving millions of dollars daily. Now, the Lagos-Calabar Coast Highway is not only a road, we’re going to have a lot of windmill energy. We’re going to have to connect all the communities.

Everywhere this road passes is an economic corridor. We are building residential houses. We’re building factories. We’re building industries. So, we are connecting the road to the existing ones. The truth is that road projects are not done in one year; they are not done overnight, so these projects that we inherited, we are redesigning a number of them.

With the floating of the Naira and with the removal of fuel subsidy, we also have another set of challenges that all the inherited projects were now being faced with a review of the prices, which is in the right of the contractors. So, my take is that the legacy projects, four of them, LagosCalabar, 750 kilometres. You have Sokoto-Badagry.

The Sokoto-Badagry has a lot of economic corridors. You have 68 dams along that corridor, which we’re going to have irrigations. We have millions of hectares of land along that corridor. And that’s what Mr. President has planned that we are going to leverage that corridor to do massive agriculture.

And they are commending him for what he did in Brazil where people signed an MoU immediately to come and invest in our livestock. So, that is happening. You see the one that comes from Trans-Sahara.; it comes from Calabar, passing through Ebonyi, Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, down to Abuja. You now see the one that is from Akwanga, Bauchi and Gombe.

So, you can never say that these projects are not relevant. The Abuja-Kano road is 375 kilometres dualized, which is 750 kilometres, with six lanes. The Sokoto to Zamfara, to Kastina, to Kaduna is 350 kilometres dualized, which, if you multiply by two, is 700 kilometres. So, I don’t know what you mean by these projects are ongoing as inherited, and these are going on now.

We have these projects. The three of them are going on. We are redesigning the Akwanga-Jos-Bauchi-Gombe on concrete, so that it can have a shelf life of between 50 and 100 years. All the roads within the economic corridor of this country are being done by this administration. On Enugu-Port Harcourt road, there are four sections of the road,

The legacy projects of Mr. President are not just road projects, they include investments and they come with a lot of economic benefits

we have section one that is coming from Port Harcourt down to Aba. We have a contractor there, and that project, I can tell you, is about 67 per cent done. That’s why I say that sometimes people can cancel without knowledge. I’m telling you that things are going on there.

Even from Port Harcourt down to Aba is being redesigned and is being reconstructed. We now put concrete by the shoulders and then do the carriageway on asphalt.

Then within Aba itself, you have just about 8.5 kilometers been done by another contractor. That job will be completed by February. And then you now come to the end of Enugu-axis, under Mr. President, we had collapsed twin bridges there.

Today, that bridge is being rebuilt by Mr. President, and it’s over 95 per cent done. It’s the same time that we had the Shendam Bridge that collapsed. Mr. President gave an order and said: Minister, you must finish the two projects within one year. And we are beating the record.

What is left of that section is about 61 kilometres and it is in the 2025 budget. So, we believe strongly that by May, we should have the Enugu-Port Harcourt carriageway, both sides, completed. I was there recently and it’s a beauty to behold.

What about the East-West road?

The East-West oad starts from Lokoja to Calabar, and when you start from Lokoja to Benin, you have four sections and we inherited this project.

The first section is being done by a Chinese company called CGC. The second section is being done by MotherCat. The third section is being done by Dantata and Sawoe and the last section is done by RCC.

I wasn’t satisfied with the games of the three companies, so I terminated them. And Mr. President has directed that we should first complete one carriageway.

So, we have rescoped it. And we have gone to the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) to get no objection, so that we can have competent contractors that can complete that section. So, it’s part of this East-West Road.

It’s not abandoned. It’s ongoing. And then you get to Benin; the Benin to Warri has three contractors. This section is so bad. The water table is so high and you have also the subgrade. So, we had to redesign it on concrete.

And that is ongoing and the people of that area are very happy. When you move down to Ughelli; you have about five washouts. We’ve reintroduced 14 relief culverts and we are rebuilding about three kilometers of that section on concrete. And so, you have seamless passage until you get to Bayelsa. In Bayelsa, you also have about four washouts.

Where we are, we’ve introduced about 16 relief culverts and Setraco is at the last lap of that job. Then you progress and come into Port Harcourt, Eleme Junction. And between Eleme Junction and Onne Port, that is the worst section of that road. And it is the most trafficked section of the road.

The President is giving very serious attention to that road. I recall that last month, he directed the National Security Adviser, myself and the GCCEO of NNPC to look into that project with a view of completing it in April.

I don’t want to mention RCC because they think I’m not happy with them. But I’ve given them seven days to mobilize in four sections. If they don’t do that, I will terminate that contract and give it to about two competent contractors. But don’t forget that we redesigned it because it was awarded on asphalt but we redesigned it.

And then you progress down to Eket, we are doing a bypass, so that the traffic will lessen. You can have seamless travel between the carriageway. We are bypassing the distance, so that you don’t go through the town. And lastly, we have the Akwa Ibom to Cross River. There are three contractors.

You have an indigenous contractor, Samtech. He’s doing very well. And Mr. President has directed that we must encourage indigenous contractors who are doing well. He’s using concrete in his section. You have the Julius Berger. We have terminated the job of Julius Berger because we could not agree on a price review.

And then you have the CECC. They’re also doing very well. So, that’s the East-West road. You can agree with me that there is no critical road within the economic corridor of this country that is not being attended to. Sometimes you look at state roads even local government roads even though Mr. President believes that there is nothing like state roads or federal roads, that all roads belong to Nigeria and that they should be attended to.