President Bola Tinubu has pleaded Nigerians to be patient with him no matter the situation of things in the country as there is light at the end of the tunnel.
He made this plea during the inauguration of the completed Phase 1, Section 1 (30km by six lanes) of the 750km Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway on Saturday.
“I know at this stage, your expectation is still very high and our people are still going through difficult times. I take this opportunity to appeal to all Nigerians that the hope is here and it is realisable.
“You would be proud of the benefits, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Inflation is coming down, the corruption in the exchange rate is eliminated, the corruption in fuel subsidy is limited to the barest minimum.
“It is all for you the people, we are reducing the cost of manufacturing, and encouraging manufacturing locally. We give all incentives for everyone to abide by the principle. May God bless our country; may God bless Lagos State and keep our fighting soldiers safe.”
“Let me at this stage warn all developers, the Federal Government reinforced the setbacks for the interest of our nation, development without approval will not be compensated. We have gazetted and published the setbacks, we are going to enforce it rigidly in every way possible,” the president said.
Introducing the project, the Minister of Works, David Umahi, stated that it was designed on a six-lane carriageway with a total corridor width of 60m noting to the president that no landmark property was harmed.
“Mr President, I want to state that we did no harm to the landmark property. It is by your order that we should save as much infrastructure as possible even though they violated the gazetted route.
“The landmark infrastructure is intact, what went off was their encroachment on our front shoreline, and the Supreme Court ruled that 250 metres from the shoreline belong to the Federal Government, and so we didn’t do that,” he said.
Umahi also stated that all shanties along the road which were compensated for are by the mercies of the president —he said over N18bn has been paid already noting that it was not supposed to be so, by law.
