All APC has done is bait Nigerians of both the vulnerable and greedy varieties, snatch political power and embezzle.
SONALA OLUMHENSE FROM PUNCH
When I first heard Minister of Works David Umahi say that the Lagos-Calabar Highway would be completed by January 2026, I spilt my coffee.
“I assure you that by January next year, God willing, we will have this road completed,” he was quoted as saying during an inspection tour on Wednesday
I lost my coffee because I know that the Bola Tinubu administration has neither the intention nor the heart to commence and complete 200 kilometres of the project highway by 2027, let alone the entire project one year earlier.
It is simply not in the DNA of the APC administrations. Keep in mind the APC manifesto, which the party itself undermined.
That is what happens when you pretend to renew hope when the very hope being renewed is the one that you violated by yourself.
And so, hours later, Umahi was back on the microphone: “Some of you reported that I said the [Highway] was 70 per cent done and will be finished by January 2026 [but] that is not what I said. We were dealing with Section One. And then, [I] said, as at today, that Section One, which is 47.47km, has been 70 per cent completed,” he said.
Do you get it? Less than 50km—or 7 per cent–of the project is expected to be completed by January 2026.
The truth is rather elementary: APC is defrauding Nigeria. It has been so since it arrived in May 2015.
It will not complete this highway or any other major one, just as it will not honour any significant electoral promise.
The APC game is one only of possessing power. Get it, spend it.
As far back as 2001, The Economist called the game, “Bill, borrow and embezzle.”
All APC has done is bait Nigerians of both the vulnerable and greedy varieties, snatch political power and embezzle.
Meaning: if you are paying attention to their activities, as opposed to what they are proclaiming or promising, you already know that the Tinubu administration will never complete any significant infrastructure, let alone lead by example.
Of course, it will buy a jet for the president. Renovate the newly-renovated State House. Build and renovate other mansions and annexes for him. Procure a yacht and pay the ‘First Daughter’s personal hotel bills.
Renovate the just-built State House Medical Centre. Give him N10bn for solar panels allegedly to avoid an annual N47bn State House power bills.
It will relentlessly flaunt power while flouting the rule of law on which our constitutional order is based, and the decency and dignity of our people.
Just a few weeks ago, for instance, former President Muhammadu Buhari was trying to prolong the ruse of his being a modest man, telling Nigerians that he now sustains himself on rental income from his Kaduna property.
He told an APC meeting, “After my eight years as a civil president, I have only three houses: one in Daura and two in Kaduna. I have given one out for renting, where I get money for feeding.”
I have consistently challenged this self-serving account, drawing attention to a mansion in Abuja that a newspaper reported in June 2015 that he owned. Buhari has never denied it.