Where is the Minister of Works?

“I beg, where is the Minister of Works?” That’s the cry of anguish from a frustrated commuter held for a multiple of hours on the dilapidated Benin to Sapele highway in the penultimate week. During the same period, there must have been similar outcries from those stranded on the Abuja-Kaduna highway or the Ifake-Oye-Ilupeju axis in Ekiti State. Actually, there is a video circulating showing passengers stranded for three days on the Benin-Lagos highway and one frustrated fellow lamenting that for those days they have not been able to eat nor transfer money.

Up there in Taraba State, erosion has eaten away at a section of the Zagah-Suntai road, causing it to collapse. The collapse of this all-important road has seriously disrupted the entire region’s transport network, as it connects northern and central Taraba to southern Taraba and Benue State. The common denominator in all these is that they are federal roads, varying in degrees of dilapidation, causing helpless motorists to spend torturous hours in the midst of nowhere.

 These are the height of the rains, covering the entire national space, from the normally dry far north of the country to the forests down south. When the roads fail, persons stranded on them lay the blame on David Umahi, the Minister of Works, who, one must admit, has been one of the most visible ministers of this administration, for good or bad.

Personally, I had high expectations for David Umahi when he was appointed the Minister of Works in 2023. He was visible touring many of the troubled highways and making the right noises on the spot. I looked up his CV and concluded that President Tinubu was not just dispensing a sinecure appointment to him but was procuring a square peg to fill a square hole.

David Umahi had served as a two-term governor of Ebonyi State, where he was adjudged to have acquitted himself creditably. He is an engineer and, while governor, made the provision of infrastructure, along with mega projects, a priority. Of particular note is that he constructed more than 500 kilometres of roads with concrete pavement.

I also found from other sources that before his public service engagements, he had been a building contractor and, in that private capacity, had been involved in highway construction. That I considered a plus because his predecessor was a lawyer, and his performance, even by the most generous adjudicator, would be no more than so-so.

My initial assessment of David Umahi soared even higher when I saw him hitting the ground running. He was all over the media, shown visiting many highway construction sites and making the right noises, here and there, berating contractors and civil servants alike. I was more taken by his regular visit to the Abuja-Kaduna highway, a road regularly used by those who live in Abuja to travel up north.

I noted that in one of his visits in early 2024, Minister Umahi announced with a deliberate finality that the highway would be completed within the year. He said that the ministry is ready to overcome all contractual obstacles and ensure the project’s delivery for the benefit of Nigerians before the end of 2024. A few days later, the story changed. During a visit, along with his former Ministry of Finance counterpart, Wale Edun, he said that the highway would be completed within the next 24 months.

Since then, it has been one story or the other on the Abuja-Kaduna highway project. The former contractors, Julius Berger, pulled out and the job was re-awarded to another construction firm, Infoquest. We had hoped that, with the improvement in the security situation on the road, the Ministry of Works and the new contractor would seize the opportunity to make progress.

However, the situation had remained the same for the average commuter. When the rain arrived this season, it seemed as if the suffering escalated. There were gridlocks on the highway in August and early this month that were so severe that motorists spent days languishing out there in the bush. Infoquest, the contractor, did not care to make any provision for detours, and with the rains and heavy traffic, the situation compounded small gridlocks into bigger ones.

It is the same all over the country. The strain is evident on most federal government road projects that have been under construction for years. The reason could be the contractors’ insensitivity to commuters’ safety and comfort, compounded by a lack of diligent supervision by the Ministry of Works. Furthermore, this government’s penchant for beginning expensive new road projects on a whim adds to this sorry affair. Good examples include the Lagos-Calabar Coastal and Sokoto-Badagry highways, costly projects for which even foreign loans had to be secured to finance the works.

Besides, being a pre-election year, the federal government also embarked on several other new road projects in many parts of the country. If the funds expended on starting those new road projects were spread over the existing ones, all this gnashing of teeth would not have arisen. Stranded commuters would not be straining themselves to badmouth the Minister of Works.

By Gambo Dori