Lagos-Calabar highway still lacks a comprehensive engineering plan
By the AFREEQUE newsroom, based on Punch
Nigeria’s Works Minister David Umahi acknowledges that the 750-kilometre Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway still lacks a comprehensive engineering plan, more than two years after construction began. The project is designed and costed in sections, while a kilometre of standard road would cost about $5.5 million, according to Punch.
Nigeria’s Minister of Works, David Umahi, has acknowledged that the 750-kilometre Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway still does not have a single engineering plan covering its entire route. Studies and costs are established by section, he said on Friday during an interview broadcast by Arise Television and reported by Punch.
Umahi said his ministry’s archives contained neither a complete soil study nor detailed technical documents for the entire route. According to him, plans for each section are drawn up after environmental assessments and field studies determine local constraints.
To defend the cost of the first section, the minister estimated that a standard two-lane road would cost $5.5 million (7.3 billion naira) per kilometre. He compared this amount with that of a coastal highway project in Benin, while disputing the application of an average cost to the 750 kilometres, as the terrain, bridges and technical requirements vary from section to section.
Construction began in March 2024. Umahi also said the project had been conceived as early as 1955 and that its concept had been published in the official gazette in 2006. The previous day, Punch reported that the highway’s route had been connected to the East-West Road in the Niger Delta as part of a new stage of the project Lagos-Calabar highway linked to East-West Road.
