Chekwas Okorie: Why I Disagreed with Obasanjo on Lagos-Calabar Highway

Segun James

The Founder of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Chekwas Okorie, has lamented what he described as distortion of facts and deliberate malicious propaganda against the Lagos-Calabar Highway contract, saying such talk is a disservice to the development of the country.

Okorie said he particularly disagreed with the statement of former President Olusegun Obasanjo that the project is “wasteful and a fraud.”

“The recent public presentation of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s book wherein he described the Lagos-Calabar Highway as ‘wasteful and a fraud’ compelled me to weigh in on this debate. I have immense respect for President Obasanjo. In the absence of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first republic president of Nigeria and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the first republic Premier of the old Western Region, President Obasanjo unarguably is the most prolific author amongst Nigeria’s former Heads of State or Presidents on national issues since Nigeria’s independence in 1960. 

“Finally, the Lagos-Calabar Highway, upon completion, will be the biggest federal government project in the areas that have over years provided the goose that always laid the golden eggs that sustained Nigeria.

Any person from the seventeen states of southern Nigeria who is not supporting the construction of the Lagos-Calabar Highway should have a rethink.”

He therefore, urged President Tinubu to pay similar attention  to the resuscitation of the deliberately abandoned sea ports in Warri, Bonny, Port Harcourt, Onne, Uyo, and Calabar, saying doing this, “Nigeria will record and remember you as the father of modern Nigeria.”