President Bola Tinubu has commissioned the first completed section of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway.
The newly inaugurated Section 1 spans 30 kilometres, stretching from Ahmadu Bello Way to Eleko Village in Lekki Peninsula, Lagos. It is a six-lane dual carriageway designed to boost connectivity and spur economic activity along Nigeria’s coastline.
President Tinubu expressed pride and fulfilment during the commissioning ceremony held in Lagos on Saturday, saying,
“It is a great honor for me and a sense of fulfilment to stand before you to commission the completed part of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway Corridor. This is Phase 1, Section 1 from Ahmadu Bello Way of the 750km iconic project.”
The project, which officially commenced in March 2024, is being constructed by Hitech Construction Company in phases and will eventually link Lagos to Cross River State, traversing the coastal regions of Ondo, Delta, Edo, Bayelsa, Rivers, and Akwa Ibom.
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At the commissioning, Minister of Works David Umahi said the government paid compensation for both shanties and permanent houses affected by the project, even though the law does not require payment for structures along the gazetted route.
“By law, we were not supposed to pay compensation for shanties along the gazetted route. We paid compensation for those who had their shanties, we paid compensation for those who had their real houses,” he said.
- Umahi revealed that the federal government disbursed a total of N18 billion in compensation for Section 1 of the highway. He revealed that while compensation duties ordinarily fall to state governments under Federal Executive Council (FEC) guidelines, President Tinubu instructed the Ministry of Works to oversee the payments directly, ensuring that the project would proceed without delays.
- Addressing concerns over the impact on Landmark Beach Resort, the minister assured that no infrastructure belonging to Landmark was damaged during the highway’s construction. Following the president’s directive, the road was carefully designed to preserve existing structures as much as possible, even when this meant deviating from the gazetted route. At one point, the dual carriageway splits into two lanes to accommodate the resort’s premises.
“The Landmark infrastructure is intact; what went was their encroachment on our front shoreline,” Umahi explained, citing the Supreme Court ruling that the federal government holds ownership of the 250-meter shoreline from the coast.
In addition to the coastal highway, President Tinubu commissioned several road projects across southern Nigeria. These include the rehabilitation of the Calabar-Ugep-Katsina-Ala Road (Section II) in Benue and Cross River States, the dualisation of the East-West Road (Eleme Junction to Ahoada) in Rivers State, the Alesi-Ugep section in Cross River, and the upgrade of a 15km stretch from Eleme Junction to Onne Port in Rivers State.
