LET’S continue with the vital questions to our leaders in Western Nigeria on the points at issue in this serial – curious systemic failure (in Yoruba land).
As I concluded last week, we need to continue this serial to ask the southwest leaders to pinpoint the future-ready constituency projects they have implemented since 1999 when we set off this unbroken democracy.
Here is the thing, before they begin to celebrate the meretricious South-west Development Commission they have just conjured, we need to interrogate their legacies.
As I noted in the 2018 preface to this serial, the power of the budgeting and implementation; the power of monetary and fiscal policies arm-chair analysts always trifle with are not only with the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry.
The power of the National Assembly to shape development and deliver services to the people is enormous in a democracy that works.
I noted too then that the lawmakers know about their enormous powers in the constitution. Forget about the ignorant boasters, the President and the National Economic Council (NEC) power brokers cannot and shall not spend a dime to fight anywhere without the National Assembly’s approval. That is what the organic law of the federation provides. And that is what should happen in a functional democracy. This is without prejudice to the provisions for emergency management.
So, in a democracy that works, legislators are very influential. They work for their constituencies – the focal point of their mandate. That is their major civic and political duty to the people they represent. They should be passionate about constituency projects they always lobby the executive arm to include in the budget details. As once noted here, they most times use the political party platforms including the party caucuses in the legislature to settle inclusion of most of these (constituency) projects in the national appropriation bills.
In the same vein, they as a matter of expediency, sit down with the ministers concerned to work out details of proposals and discipline of execution. They should always work hard to ensure that contractors perform on time because of next election. They always perform this quiet operation too by lobbying the finance minister and their own appropriation committees’ presiding officers. This is part of the most critical assignment of legislators: representation. That is the most significant responsibility of legislators: representation! Law making and oversight functions they always tell us about their job are only prominent but those functions are not as significant as representation in a working democracy.
As Professor Ben Nwabueze, an authority on this discipline once noted, the Legislature is the distinctive mark of a country’s sovereignty, the index of its status as a state and the source of much of the power exercised by the executive in the administration of government.
And so, whether parliamentary or presidential, the organ of government that captures the mind most as epitomizing democracy is the legislature. For that is the place where the public sees democracy in action, in the form of debates, and consideration of motions, resolutions and bills. The closest politician to the voter is the representative of his constituency in the legislature.
‘Their Hall of Shame’
As I once reported here, the journey to infamy began in the previous administrations when on July 9, 2013 it was reported that the federal government had awarded a whopping N167 billion worth of Lagos- Ibadan Expressway construction contracts. The then Works Minister, Mike Onolememen who announced the details said the federal government had awarded the N167 billion contracts to Messrs Julius Berger Nigeria Plc. and Reynolds Construction Company (RCC) Limited. According to the then Works Minister, the two construction firms, that emerged the preferred bidders for Section 1 (Lagos- Shagamu Interchange) and Section 11 (Shagamu Interchange – Ibadan) were to deliver the roads in 48 months – from July 2013.
The minister gave some background: “The government had earlier entered into concession agreement with Messrs Bi-Courtney in 2009 to develop the section between Ojota old plaza in Lagos and old toll plaza in Ibadan, a distance of approximately 105 kilometres under a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement for enhanced quality of service to all users of the highway in tandem with international standards”. He had added, “four years later, no real progress was recorded while the road users wallowed in hardship and constantly at risk of accident on the road.
The critical project is also a major artery that connects Lagos, major Nigerian sea ports, to other states of the federation and forms not only a part of the Trans-Saharan Highway that links Lagos on the Atlantic Ocean to Algiers on the Mediterranean Sea but also part of the Trans-African Highway, linking the Atlantic City of Lagos to the Indian Ocean city of Mombassa in East Africa through Cameroon and Central Africa.
Onolememen, an architect, had then said that the federal government had made tremendous progress in the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the Benin-Ore-Shagamu Expressway, which on full completion, would further reinforce the socio-economic benefits to be harnessed from the Lagos-Ibadan road reconstruction. Sadly, this was not true as the only progress made was from Ore to Benin where the minister hails from.
But from Shagamu to Ore, the most critical part was not touched before the Goodluck Jonathan administration left office in May 2015. The deep gorges along Shagamu Interchange –Ijebu-Ode to Ore axis of the road touched off this serial on the poor road infrastructure in Yoruba land eleven years after Onolememen left office as Works Minister.
The issue of Bi-Courtney and the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway peculiar mess was briefly touched in this first part of the 2019 piece when it was revealed that the first trouble with the PPP project awarded to Dr. Wale Babalakin’s firm was fierce opposition to the project by governments of Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states then in opposition, which challenged the then federal government.
The court process on compensation and other complications began the roadblocks to the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway under President Goodluck Jonathan. The almost completed but poorly constructed road (Lagos-Ibadan) was not commissioned by the Buhari administration despite promises before May 29, 2024.
Curiously, a budget cut for Lagos-Ibadan Expressway story reared its head too in 2017 fiscal year when the Power, Works and Housing Minister, Babatunde Raji Fashola, one of the Western Nigeria’s representatives in then cabinet revealed on June 28, 2017 that cruel fate that had dogged the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, undoubtedly the most economically valuable highway in the country, had taken a turn for the worse because the National Assembly had inflicted a drastic cut on the budgetary allocation for the completion of its rehabilitation.
According to the former Lagos State Governor, Fashola, the allocation of N31 billion in 2018 budget for the road by the ministry was reduced to just N10 billion by the lawmakers to make room for projects such as boreholes and health centres in their communities. What was worse, that happened when the contractors were already being owed N15 billion and were threatening to pull out of site.
This was how an editorial in one of the pro-Western Nigeria newspapers put the shameful act in June 2017: ‘It is inconceivable that the lawmakers could turn a very important national responsibility as revenue appropriation for landmark development projects into an opportunity to serve their personal interest…’
Specifically, the strategic Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, and all the related routes to Port Harcourt thereafter became election-time projects. And we were on the march again for Project 2019. In December, 2017, it was reported that federal government was considering the possibility of increasing the scope of work to N300 billion. The story broke in December 21, that year (2017) after a marathon meeting of the federal executive council at which N377 billion worth of contracts for other road projects were also approved.
The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway component of the meeting was not discussed by any of the ministers that spoke to State House reporters. The SSA Media to the President, Malam Garba Shehu only announced the N300 billion deal in a statement as an addendum after the FEC briefing, which excluded the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway abandoned projects. That was critical. It meant then that the Works, Power and Housing Minister, Fashola, had been successfully arm-twisted by the federal legislators to keep quiet about the critical road projects Minister Onolememen promised would be completed in 48 months since 2013. That explained why the Lagos-Ibadan expressway was delayed and denied for so long and construction is still going on even at the Lagos end till this weekend.
And so parts along Lagos- Ogere (Ogun) axis are already showing signs of shoddiness.
The salient point in all this rigmarole on road infrastructure debacle in Yoruba land is that the federal government alone should not be blamed.
And so all the elected and appointed representatives from the Western Nigeria (Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo and Ekiti states) since 1999 should be inducted in a Hall of Shame on December 31, 2024 for failing their people on road infrastructure, poor funding of education and healthcare, all of which used to be the imprimatur and pride of South West.
In the same vein, all the past governors of the six states in Western Nigeria should be included in the Hall of Shame for failing to help in constructing link roads to their six states. Let no one tell us that they are all federal roads. What did they do to sensitise the federal representatives, senators and minsters including Fashola who was works minister for eight years? And this epitaph should be there: “Here are the faces Banjamin Franklin once called, Great Talkers, But Little Doers Who Led Their Once Prominent, Pace-Setter Region To Reproach in 21st Century: They All Danced On The Grave of Awolowo, The Great…”
Even as we have some mental picture of who should be where in the ‘Hall of Shame’, we can see some flashes of brilliance in the way the Governor of Oyo State has been reconstructing even the so-called ‘federal roads’ within and around Ibadan to link ancient kingdoms such as Ibadan/Moniya-Iseyin Road, Lagos-Ibadan diversion road to Oshogbo-Ife-Akure; rehabilitation of power station inside Ibadan, revival of Fashola Commercial Farm with a world-class Ranching in Oke Ogun Area of Oyo State. Governor Makinde should not be discouraged by some of his colleague’s executive frivolities including the one who celebrated distribution of books to primary schools this week, shamelessly in Western Nigeria. Finally, the governors who are struggling with funding three universities in their states should also note my 2016 viewpoint that we need better, not more universities that can’t produce smart and employable graduates in Africa’s most strategic country.
- Oloja is former editor of The Guardian newspaper and his column, Inside Stuff, runs on the back page of the newspaper on Sundays. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays.