The problem is that Nigeria’s APC government has no track record of accountability or performance, even on large infrastructure projects that people can readily monitor.
SONALA OLUMHENSE FROM PUNCH
On April 14, 2025, President Bola Tinubu “flagged off” the reconstruction of the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano federal highway.
Tinubu, for the record, was away on vacation in France in an endeavour mischievously labelled a “working visit,” a contradiction in terms.
Under the new arrangement, the 700-kilometre road will cost N777bn and is meant to be completed within 14 months, according to the Minister of Works, David Umahi.
The problem is that Nigeria’s APC government has no track record of accountability or performance, even on large infrastructure projects that people can readily monitor. I cite the example of another segment of the same A2 highway, the Lokoja-Benin City road that it promised in March 2024 to complete within six months.
First, the AKR is NOT 700 kilometres (or 1500 as Umahi’s predecessor, Babatunde Fashola, once called it); this is a corrupt obfuscation.
The road is 375.9km long, and the APC government, as well as Julius Berger and the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority, through the PDIF, have always treated it as such.
Second, the AKR is NOT a new road, and it is curious that APC wants to present it as such. It is a road that is largely completed. In brief, here is its sad history under this government:
In December 2017, President Muhammadu Buhari awarded to Julius Berger a whopping N155.7bn contract for the job. Widely advertised by a presidential spokesman as one of Buhari’s “roads to glory,” its construction commenced in May 2018, and the project was to be completed in 36 months – by 2021.
Funding was to be with government appropriations starting in 2017, along with “additional provisions.” One of those provisions was the PDIF, and its audit reports show that:
In 2018, it “invested US$260 million” into five projects, which included the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Second Niger Bridge (SNB) and the AKR;
In 2019 it “deployed N208.2 billion” into the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the SNB and the AKR; and in 2020, it “disbursed approximately N92.2 billion” into the three projects.
Further funds inflow into those projects arrived in the form of fresh Abacha loot repatriations in February 2020 when the United States and the Island of Jersey concluded an agreement to return US$311 million, to be invested exclusively in them.