• Umahi challenges critics to debate over project
• Afenifere hails minister’s visit to Ilaje, faults ‘soil challenge’ excuse
• Insists Ondo’s 100km coastline must be integrated into project

The Federal Ministry of Works has launched the Coastal Highway Guards to strengthen security and protect critical infrastructure along the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway.

The initiative, launched yesterday by the Minister of Works, David Umahi, began with the deployment of 40 officers who will maintain a visible presence along the highway and work with the state’s security agencies.

The guards are expected to report suspicious activity, monitor and report vandalism, and help prevent activities that are detrimental to the safety and smooth operation of the highway.

Their responsibilities, according to him, will also include restricting hawking, loitering, the use of commercial motorcycles (Okada) and tricycles (Keke) on the highway.

The team is led by Gen. Adekunle Shodunke (rtd) and will operate in conjunction with relevant security agencies to ensure effective monitoring and protection of the road infrastructure.

Umahi said the initiative was not an empowerment programme but a full-time employment scheme designed to protect national assets.

He said the initiative was also in line with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda and the Federal Government’s commitment to safeguarding critical infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Umahi has again defended the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road project and is challenging critics to a debate over the road infrastructure.

Umahi, who spoke yesterday during a media briefing and stakeholders’ engagement, said the road would help to open up the country’s economy.

“Now, let anybody tell me any state that is not a construction site under President Bola Tinubu. I am waiting for a debate on this.

He, however, warned against loitering, selling, and sleeping on the coastal highway, insisting that the Federal Government won’t tolerate such actions.

HOWEVER, the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, yesterday, stressed that the oil-rich coastal communities of Ondo State would not accept any deviation from the original design of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway.

It insisted that the project must fully integrate the state’s 100-kilometre Atlantic shoreline.

Secretary-General of the apex Yoruba group, Sola Ebiseni, who described the visit of the Minister of Works, David Umahi, to the Ilaje area of the state as a commendable act of democratic responsiveness, stated that the Federal Government’s explanation for bypassing Ondo’s coastline based on soil challenges remains unacceptable to the Yoruba people of the Niger Delta.

According to Ebiseni, who frowned on what he described as a fundamental inequity in the project’s current alignment, rejected the minister’s explanation that engineering challenges necessitated bypassing the state’s coastline, insisting that the terrain is not insurmountable.

He said that contrary to the minister’s suggestion that some groups opposed the project, the Yoruba coastal communities had long anticipated the highway with “agitated enthusiasm” and believed in its feasibility from the beginning.