In the end, last week’s Arise TV interview with the Minister of Works, Mr David Umahi, ended somewhat productively. I had moments when I feared an outbreak of fisticuffs across the airwaves.
Was Rufai Oseni combative?
Not at all. His job is to ask hard questions. Guests, particularly government officials, and especially the Nigerian variety, do not often appear on such programmes to answer questions; they come to tell their own story and paint a particular profile.
And so, in a programme that was basically the continuation of a previous confrontation, Mr Oseni arrived with his gloves strapped on. If he stuck to the subject and the facts and was not insulting, being tough and relentless is exactly who he is supposed to be and what he is supposed to do. He did his job.
Minister Umahi, flaunting his MAGA, sorry, “Renewed Hope”, cap, appeared to have sought the interview because he wanted to clear up what he perceived as “misinformation” by Oseni on a previous programme.
The hand-to-hand combat was good, but it was co-host Ayo Mairo-Ese who framed the moment by asking Umahi: Is there a website or any platform that Nigerians can track progress on the road projects (of the Ministry of Works)?
I had advocated this in April 2025, challenging the Minister “not simply to make speeches and give contracts, but to establish a tracker on his Ministry’s website, with hyperlinks, so that Nigerians can track each contract, contractor and expenditure.”
Umahi clearly did not listen. I do not think he cares. Here is how he fumbled the reporter’s question:
“We have a website, and we have directed the governors of these states to deploy the state commissioners so that they will monitor what we are doing. I have directed that in these major projects, we should list out major TV stations that will be able to go and be part of the operation.
“They will video the operation, they will video the [incoherent] and they will deploy to social media…”
He might as well have said, in that same arrogant tone with which he dismissed Oseni as “too small” (that is, unimportant): “Tracking? You want to track my work? Who are you?”
Because he did not answer the question. How is a Minister more important than a journalist whose questions he cannot answer?
First, Umahi has no control over what the states do or do not. And he has no business listing TV stations to become part of some government “operation.” Private news organisations such as Arise do not work for the government.
They will therefore not shoot videos of anything at the direction of the government or “download” to social media like a Ministry of Works contractor mobilising to a work site. If the Ministry wants that done, it should do it itself.
But Umahi was clearly confirming what Nigerians fear the most: these infrastructure contracts are what Nigerians call “as-man-know-man” deals: the government announces the contract with almost no planning and no firm funding arrangements, and then plays for time until it leaves office. That is why we have hundreds of thousands of abandoned projects.
Anyone looking for a recent example can find it in the abrupt announcement that the 700-kilometre Lagos-Calabar Coastal highway is now suddenly 800 km. In the exchange with Oseni, however, Umahi revealed that there are no plans concerning how to fund the additional length.
The truth is that under the APC administrations, beginning in 2015, Nigeria abandoned even the old professional courtesy in the Ministry of Works to maintain basic public information about its road projects. The boastful APC government seemed to have been shocked in 2017 to find that Works was maintaining a database of ongoing projects, and immediately halted the practice.
That is why the database has not been updated in the past eight years, and there is nothing on the pages of a Ministry, which claims to operate in nine languages, to inform Nigerians of what the government is doing.
That is why I fully understand Umahi’s empty words in response to tracking. “We have a website, and we have directed the governors of these states to deploy the state commissioners so that they will monitor what we are doing,” is a confession of bad faith, not an answer.
“I have directed that in these major projects we should list out major TV stations that will be able to go and be part of the operation,” is a copout, not an explanation.
Here are three examples that 2017 document about how the system works:
The Dualization of Abuja-Abaji-Lokoja Road, Sect. III (Abaji-Koton Karfe) in Kogi State, which was contracted in 2000 and was supposed to have been completed in 2011, was in 2017 only 53%; still, its contract value ballooned by 166% (from N9.697 billion to N25.827 billion);
The Kano-Maiduguri Road dualization (Section II: Shuwarin-Azare in Bauchi State), contracted in September 2006 for N35.841 billion, was in 2017 only 56.47% completed, but with the contract value almost doubled to N65.3 billion; and
The Construction of the Oju/Loko-Oweto Bridge to Benue and Nassarawa States, which was contracted in October 2011 to be undertaken within one month, was still uncompleted in 2017; but its contract value had jumped from N36.1bn to N51.6bn.
Examine the document for yourself: This is what the government of the fake anti-corruption champion from Daura, with the consent of Umahi’s predecessor, Babatunde Fashola, put in place. President Bola Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope” machine appears to approve that transparency is a disease rather than a cure.
This is why, although Umahi was full of words at the interview, he was empty. He does not want Nigerians to know about the machinations afoot.
Because the problem is the government. Otherwise, in just one hour, Umahi can set up a tracker on the Ministry’s website that will show each project, contractor, date of contract, value of contract, and completion date.
It ought to be that simple. It has nothing to do with commissioners of information or local government chairmen or media houses: just basic information provided and updated regularly to the people.
Why is this difficult? Because Umahi is unwilling to say that it is better for Nigerians to be kept ignorant. Remember: the Coastal Highway was supposed to have been 700km/10 lanes and a rail line. But after screaming that to the world, they abruptly downgraded it to 700km/6; and now extended it by 100km. Nothing in this ever-shifting configuration appears to include accountability.
How many kilometres of the Coastal Road have now been completed, and what is the projection for this December or by election day? How advanced is the Sokoto-Badagry Highway, and what will that one cost? How advanced is the Abuja-Kano Road that Julius Berger had almost completed?
Umahi will not say, and if he spends the next six years in office, he will still berate people who ask fair questions of him. Remember: Rufai is not the first Oseni he has insulted.
Keep in mind, Umahi is the one who, in March 2024, 19 months ago, loudly promised to construct the Lokoja-Benin City highway in six months.
He owes the Osenis and the Nigerian people an apology.
