Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has accused President Bola Tinubu’s government of corruption and financial waste over the N15.6 trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project.

Mr Obasanjo said Mr Tinubu and Vice-President Kashim Shettima exemplified financial waste and corruption.

Mr Obasanjo, a critic of successive administrations since he left office, described the highway project measuring 700km as wasteful and corrupt. 

The ex-Nigeria leader condemned Mr Tinubu’s spending of N21 billion on a new official residence for Mr Shettima, describing it as a misplaced priority designed to embezzle public funds.

“Typical examples of waste, corruption and misplaced priority are the murky Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road on which the president had turned deaf ears to protests,” said Mr Obasanjo in his new book, ‘Nigeria: Past and Future’. “And the new vice-president’s official residence built at a cost of N21 billion in the time of economic hardship to showcase the administration hitting the ground running and to show the importance of the office of the vice-president. What small minds!”

A presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, did not immediately reply to a request for comments.

Works minister David Umahi said the highway project would cost N4.93 billion per kilometre, which begins at Eko Atlantic and is expected to terminate at the Lekki Deep Sea Port. About N1.06 trillion has been released for the pilot phase, or six per cent of the project.

In his recently unveiled books (the second one is ‘Lest We Forget: Slavery, Slave Trade, Emancipation, and Reparation’) in Abeokuta to celebrate his 88th birthday, Mr Obasanjo assessed the two years of Mr Tinubu in office, concluding that it appears the game of short-changing millions of Nigerians would continue because “everything is said to be transactional and the slogan is ‘It is my turn to chop.”

He said the majority of those who were opportune to hold leadership positions in the country as governors, presidents, ministers, commissioners, and even as local government chairpersons are ill-prepared and self-centred. 

“How do you explain the situation of a chief executive, a governor, whose business was owing the banks billions of naira and millions of dollars before becoming a governor and within two years of becoming governor, without his company doing any business, he paid all that his businesses owed the banks.

“You are left to guess where the money came from. Having got away with that in the first term, he consigned to himself almost half of the state resources in the second term. He was a typical example of the goings-on at that level almost universally in the country with only a few exceptions,” Mr Obasanjo stated.

He explained that the ones that “are criminally ridiculous are the chief executives that deceive, lie and try to cover up on the realities and truth of action and inaction on contract awards, agreements, treaties, borrowings and forward sales of national assets. Such chief executives are unfit for the job they find themselves in.”

In 2019, Mr Obasanjo excoriated then-President Muhammadu Buhari in a series of letters over his economic policies and mishandling of insecurity.