On Landmark Beach and the Coastal road project

For the past month, I have been consumed by the planned (and then executed) demolition of Landmark Beach. I couldn’t bring myself to watch the videos of the demolition. I could barely even write about it beyond sad emoji tweets. I confess that the pain is personal (Paul Onwuanibe, aka Tweenie, is a good friend of mine. I know how incredibly proud he was of what he achieved with Landmark and deservedly so).

I have spent time there on visits to Lagos and recommended it to others. The personal connection aside, it does not make sense to me that any government in its right mind would destroy a thriving ecosystem to sink money into a project that is neither urgent nor inevitable (and nothing I’ve read about the project has convinced me otherwise). Unless, of course, that government had some other undisclosed interests—interests powerful enough to blind it to the folly of destroying investment while simultaneously wanting to encourage investment. How are you going to attract investment when someone’s investment could be so callously destroyed in a matter of days?

Mr Dada Olusegun, President Tinubu’s SSA, uploaded a statement on the Lagos-Calabar coastal road project, the project responsible for the demolition of Landmark Beach, on Twitter. The communique, filled with hyperbole on a Trumpian scale, announces that it is “Nigeria’s most ambitious transport infrastructure project since independence. In terms of scope, distance covered, and connectivity, not even the 3rd Mainland Bridge in Lagos, the 2nd Niger Bridge in Onitsha/Asaba, or the Abuja-Kano expressway comes close. It is simply “a world-class iconic project.” Emphasis mine.

Even in a country so used to exaggeration as Naija is, there are some exaggerations that surely cannot take themselves seriously. Those smarter than I am have made all the arguments against making this world-class iconic project a priority—the money could have been better used elsewhere; against the shape and route it is taking—the construction could have gone underwater, it could have bypassed Landmark; against how it was contracted out—the troubling lack of transparency, no public bidding, so I shan’t be regurgitating those. I mention them only to highlight what appears to me to be bad faith acting on the part of the government. Besides, we don’t need world-class anything when we don’t even have basic amenities. Pikin wey wan run must walk first, abi?

I remember watching an interview with Minister Umahi at the beginning of April where he downplayed the contribution of Landmark to tourism, as well as the level of devastation the planned demolition would have on Onwuanibe’s business (and the other businesses along its route). He said something like “it’s only the sand where people play that would be affected.” I wondered then if he wasn’t being deliberately obtuse. I thought, this is an educated man, surely, he must be smart enough to know that he was being dishonest in his assessment of the impact the demolition would have, and I had hoped that after misspeaking, he’d find a way in which to keep both Landmark Beach and the proposed project. But I had also hoped that if he was pressed to choose, the choice would be to preserve Landmark.

You see, the government can make all the grandiose statements it wants to make, even claim with no sense of irony, like Olusegun does in his communique that the coastal highway will encourage tourism, we know what the better choice would have been in this case. In addition to that, a great number of us remain skeptical of the government’s intentions in sinking money into this project that has suddenly become a matter of urgency while its spokespersons prevaricate when asked simple questions about it.

See how Minister Umahi pivoted to what I am beginning to suspect is his modus operandi—embarrassing deliberate obtuseness—when the journalist, Laila Johnson-Salami of Arise News, questioned him about the project’s environmental impact assessment, and whether it has received final approval from the Federal Ministry of Environment or if an exemption has been granted.

It is always a good thing to invest in infrastructure. However, you see the way this one is being handled? It stinks.