The Minister of Works, Engr. David Umahi, has fired back at Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso over claims that the North is being sidelined in road infrastructure development under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration, describing the assertion as “false, misleading and self-serving.”
In a strongly worded statement on Friday, Umahi said Kwankwaso’s remarks were a deliberate attempt to misinform northern Nigerians and create unnecessary division, stressing that the former Kano governor's comments were borne out of desperation and political posturing.
Reacting to Kwankwaso's suggestion that President Tinubu is focusing more road development in the South, Umahi said available facts clearly show otherwise. According to him, in the ongoing four key legacy projects of the Tinubu administration, the North currently has a greater share of road coverage, accounting for 52% as against the South’s 48%.
“For instance, while 220km by three lanes of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway is under construction, Kebbi alone is getting 316km and Sokoto 240km by three lanes under the Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway,” Umahi stated. He added that in terms of volume, the North currently has 756km by three lanes of road construction underway, compared to the South’s 409km.
Listing a wide array of ongoing federal projects in the North, including the N824 billion Sokoto-Zamfara-Katsina-Kaduna highway and the ₦764 billion Abuja-Kaduna-Kano expressway, Umahi argued that not only has President Tinubu been fair, but he has in fact "favoured the North, especially the Northwest where Kwankwaso hails from."
He also pointed out that many of these projects were awarded during the tail end of the Buhari administration but had stalled due to lack of funding, which Tinubu has revived and is actively executing. He cited several examples across the South as well, including the East-West Road in the South-South and critical repairs on key bridges in Lagos, to further demonstrate the administration’s balanced approach.
Umahi further disclosed that 80% of the ongoing projects in the North were inherited and funded by the Tinubu government without bias, and that in the NNPCL tax credit scheme, the North enjoys 53% allocation, while the South accounts for 47%, with only 4% and 5% going to the South East and South West respectively.
He challenged Senator Kwankwaso to a public debate on the matter and urged Nigerians to ignore what he described as divisive and unsubstantiated remarks.
"President Tinubu is a fair leader who governs with equity and the fear of God. Kwankwaso owes the President an apology and should retract his statement in the interest of national unity,” Umahi concluded.
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