Salihu Lukman, former National Vice Chairman, North-West of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has questioned the Lagos-Calabar coastal road project, which is estimated to cost N15 trillion.
Lukman feels the government should have directed the funds towards more critical needs, such as education, and claims that the APC has mismanaged several of its social investment initiatives.
“Now we poorly manage it: the problem of corruption now under Asiwaju (President Bola Tinubu). So far it has been suspended because the minister (Betta Edu of the Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development) is suspended and almost everything appears to be suspended with respect to social investment,” he said on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.
“But when you look at some of the key decisions taken by this government, one of which is the Lagos Calabar coastal highway – you look at the amount of money, we are talking of N15 trillion, that is going to go – you ask yourself, given the challenges facing this country, is that the right priority?
“Imagine you invest N15 trillion in equipping our armed forces and trying to recover all the ungoverned spaces in the country. Imagine you invest that in terms of providing classroom blocks and recruiting teachers.”
According to him, with the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria increasing, the authorities should go beyond talking and start taking action.
“You know, now we talk about this statistic of 10 million out-of-school children but we do nothing,” the APC chieftain said on the current affairs show.
“If, for instance, we are now going to mop up the state of some of these classes, you check online, you see certainly there is anything but class classroom.
“In many of our schools, you see a school with more than 500 pupils with only one teacher.”