The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has criticised the award of the contract for the construction of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road, describing it as the “most opaque contract” ever awarded in the country’s history.
ADC’s spokesman, Bolaji Abdullahi, said this last night during an interview on Channels Television following reports that the highway will be re-routed to the East-West road due to difficult terrain.
“This is why we continue to say transparency; the rules about transparency in relation to procurement exist for a reason. When you bypass that, you pay. “Now nobody knows the terms of the agreement, how they signed the contract, how they awarded the contract, and what the deliverables are.
“Now we don’t know what they are going to do,” Abdullahi said during the show.
“How are they going to go? They say, ‘Oh, they suddenly found that they can no longer go along that road.’ But where did we do any competitive bidding for that contract? It is the most opaque contract ever awarded in Nigerian history. The most expensive per-kilometre road ever awarded in Nigerian history. Now they are turning around to tell us it cannot be done. So it is characteristic of this government to do this kind of thing. But let’s see how they come out of it in the coming days.”
