The Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) has called for the immediate cancellation of the planned diversion of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway from its original route, warning that failure to do so “risks avoidable youth and community reactions across the Niger Delta.”

The youth wing of PANDEF made the call in Benin yesterday while reacting to an announcement made last week by the Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, about plans to redesign and divert the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway from its original coastal alignment to link it instead to the existing East-West Highway through Ondo State into Edo State.

Addressing journalists during a press briefing, National Youth Leader of PANDEF, Chief DonBen Donyegha, said: “Rerouting the project inland via the chronically failed East-West Road to avoid the coast is the opposite of what was promised and what justice requires.”

Donyegha, while stating that the “Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway was conceived and sold as a transformative coastal artery linking Lagos through the littoral states and communities of the Niger Delta region,” insisted that any form of diversion “is a fundamental betrayal of the project’s purpose and of the littoral oil-bearing communities whose lands generate the overwhelming bulk of Nigeria’s wealth.”

He said: “These are the same riverine and coastal communities that have hosted oil production for decades, endured pollution, gas flaring, and underdevelopment, and continue to supply the resources that keep the Nigerian economy afloat.

“Engineering challenges and costs are real in the Niger Delta; they have always been. That should NEVER be an excuse to abandon the coastal communities that bear the heaviest burden of oil extraction and environmental pollution. Previous administrations neglected the region’s connectivity.

“So, this administration’s decision to proceed with a coastal highway was widely welcomed in the Niger Delta precisely because it was expected to finally serve the littoral states and communities. Diverting it now re-opens the old wound of exclusion. This pattern of making the region that lays the golden eggs beg for what is rightfully its own is all too familiar.”

The PANDEF youth wing, therefore, called for the full reversion to the original coastal alignment across all affected sections and “transparent, documented engagement with host communities, state governments, and regional stakeholders before any further major realignment decisions.”

The youth wing, while calling on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to intervene, reverse the diversion, and restore the original coastal vision of the Lagos-Calabar Highway, also called for public confirmation that every littoral oil-bearing community originally intended to be served by the highway will still be served by a proper coastal route, not left to an upgraded inland road that has failed them for years.