•Okengwu, Lagos-Calabar Highway and works minister Umahi
A real estate investor, Stella Okengwu, has made a startling revelation about the corruption in the ongoing Lagos-Calabar coastal highway project.
Speaking on Channels Television today, the Diaspora-based real estate practitioner alleged that top officials in the federal works ministry are demanding bribes from owners of properties along the corridor in order to escape demolition.
Okengwu narrated her personal experience, saying officials from the Ministry of Works admitted privately that some developers had compromised the original gazetted alignment by bribing their way into approvals.
She said when she raised the matter with a federal controller, the official allegedly told her, ‘You’re talking too much. Get your subscribers to gather $200 million and bring it to the ministry’.
Okengwu added, “I have over 390 plots affected. These [investors] are Nigerians in the diaspora who trusted me with their investment. If I told them what he said, they’d think I was behind it.
“I called the minister, and he was very harsh. I apologised, but the next day, they came and started demolitions,” she explained.
She also decried the significant losses suffered by developers following the demolition of properties to pave the way for the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project.
She insisted that the amounts paid as compensation to property owners by the federal government fell below the value of their investments.
“People who invested over ₦150 million per plot for serviced land, including drainage and sandfilling, are now being paid ₦25 million to ₦30 million. Some families have been rendered homeless.
“One family was paid ₦20-something million for a house worth over ₦300 million,” she said.
Speaking further, she said, “In America, there is something they call an eminent domain. If a government is coming to take your property for eminent domain, it will make sure you’re okay. The compensation will be good.”
