Tinubu is fighting corruption without making noise – Umahi

Former governor of Ebonyi State and Minister of Works, David Umahi, in this interview monitored on Arise Television by DIVINE YUSUF, spoke on the changes in road infrastructure in Nigeria, and why Nigerians should not link all government action and projects to corruption.

What is it like for you coming from a state like Ebonyi to the federal level, where you’re trying to replicate projects?
I can say that it’s much bigger work. But the principle is the same because I wasn’t sitting down in office as a 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 sets to achieve that will not be achieved. That’s why he confused them with different languages.

So, it’s about 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 in the driving seat, President Bola Tinubu. 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 a love for infrastructure because that’s a catalyst for the development of any nation.

Why are you insisting on concrete roads believed to be more expensive?
I’m not a veteran of concrete roads in Nigeria. I give that credit to Mr President. When he was governor of Lagos State, there were challenges with water tables in places like Lekki and Victoria Island. Those axes have a very high-water 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 you now say, look, the concrete road is very suitable, especially where you have high traffic, where you have a very high-water table, where you have a very poor soft structure. The use of concrete is very important and the concrete road always lasts much longer than asphalt road.

But it’s not 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 paving 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), it’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 emphasized too much 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 one 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 was talking about the way we de-market this country. Everybody is 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.

Can you deny the fact that the level of corruption in this country is appalling?
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 are not there when a corpse is buried, 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 of N13 trillion, which if you review now, will come to between N16 trillion and 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 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 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 are 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, Lagos-Calabar, 750 kilometres. You have Sokoto-Badagry. Sokoto-Badagry has a lot of economic corridors. You have 68 dams along that corridor, which we’re going to have irrigation. We have millions of hectares of land along that corridor. And that’s what Mr President has planned. 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 kilometresdualised, which is 750 kilometres, with six lanes. The Sokoto to Zamfara, to Kastina, to Kaduna is 350 kilometresdualised, 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, 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.