In March 2024, the Nigerian media landscape was awash with the story: Premium Times, TVC News, Daily Trust, Galaxy TV, The Beat 97FM, The Cable, The Nation, Leadership, Blueprint, and The Sun.
They were all reporting that David Umahi, the Minister of Works, pledged to complete the Lokoja-Benin Road within six months.
In two articles (Does Dave Umahi Know Nigeria? I and II), I invited the Minister to sit before a mirror and take a deep look at himself to ensure this was a journey he wanted to undertake.
“There is no project being constructed right now in Nigeria that is going to last for seven years,” he had said of the Muhammadu Buhari government in September 2023. The question is, are we going to be maintaining or reconstructing our roads every 10 years? That is what we have been doing.”
On the Lokoja-Benin Road, he noted that various sections were under contract.
“But how much of the roads are motorable? I travelled through the roads myself, and I shed tears for the kind of pain our people are going through,” he had said.
By his own account, “I spent 14 hours on the road, having started my journey at 10 am and arriving in Benin City at 2 pm the next day, and I was very happy I experienced the pain. President Tinubu said I must travel through all the projects so that I could brief him on my experience and tell him the truth.”
That was the context in which, last March, he declared that the road would be constructed within six months. And the mass media went to town on their front pages and news leads.
“The Minister of Works, David Umahi, says the federal government has put plans in place to complete the construction of the Benin-Lokoja Road project within six months,” they reported.
“[He] said that the federal government had devised means to hasten the completion of the road project, which was awarded in 2012 but could not be completed.”
In fact, the first contract was awarded in 1999, as I reported, but the questionable list of ongoing projects from Mr Umahi’s Ministry dates the Lokoja-Benin Road from much later, in November 2012. However, neither the 2012 contracts nor the subsequent ones I cited in my article were ever completed; they were simply split into smaller pieces, re-dated, re-contracted, and re-awarded.
That was until six months ago, when Mr Umahi put his foot down and his mouth in the road would finally be constructed, and within six months.
Well, it is now six months later. Is the Lokoja-Benin City Road completed? If it is, why is it not in the news? If it is not, why is it not?
I ask this question, ultimately, of Mr Umahi. But I principally ask it of the mass media, just as I did last week when I declared September to be “EFCC month.”
The mass media loudly, widely, and broadly disseminated the announcement that this road, which the Minister had said was so bad he personally “shed tears,” would swiftly be completed. As swiftly as in six months.
But as I asked last week, “Who will now do the work of following up and dredging up?
Are we just hot-air reporters who flourish in air-conditioned press conferences?”
If Mr Umahi has done as he proclaimed, he deserves to be celebrated. After all, his predecessor, Babatunde Fashola, lied shamelessly about his tenure for eight years.
If, on the other hand, a road that the government asserted it had “devised means” to complete quickly is still bringing travellers to tears, it deserves to be reported, and the betrayal called by name.
Because, in the end, this is exactly why Nigeria does not work: character and performance are not rewarded, while duplicity is enthroned, complicity is worshipped, and collapse is celebrated.
Writing last April, I observed that in Nigeria, “No project appears genuinely designed for completion, let alone in the short term, and no project is important enough or limited enough to attract a clear completion schedule.”
I stated, “Our governments are built on guile and manipulation, not performance. They lack as much commitment to service as they do to excellence. It is why they contract and re-contract. The contractor, recognising that there is far more money in the game than in performance, invests in it.”
This is why there are so many projects on the list of the Federal Ministry of Works that I cited above, some dating back to the Olusegun Obasanjo years.
Some of the #EndBadGovernance protesters, now being prosecuted for “treason” by people who should be in jail for crimes against humanity, had not even been born.
They arrived at a place in time where nothing worked, and where politicians made a wonderful living by lying about those conditions.
A life where politicians, when they have an election ahead, have all the answers, but once they possess power, lack none.
That is how Nigeria descended into the abyss where a 20-year-old has never seen an intercity road completed and in good repair for two years; the abyss where gluttonous politicians honour promises not to the people but to their own greed.
It is how Nigeria moved from being celebrated as the giant of Africa to being derided as the ant of Africa.
It is how Nigeria became insecure and the world’s poverty capital. It is how we became smaller, hungrier, and angrier.
In every era and area, weak and dishonest politicians have reduced the concept of citizenship to a joke, and this is partly because they know they can get away with it.
Who is going to demand true accountability from them? Who is going to remind them—in public forums where they must provide answers, and not in private residences or quiet hotel rooms where they can laugh or bribe it off—of what or who they promised to be?
That is not a rhetorical question. The answer is the mass media, particularly those who were overjoyed to splash the stories when the promises were made.
One of the reasons that the government does not work in Nigeria is that politicians, having manipulated the vote, feel they do not owe anything to the voter.
This problem is related to their confidence that, for some reason, the mass media will not ask questions publicly.
Again, I use the Lokoja-Benin Road only as an example, just as I did with the EFCC last week.
A journalist does not have an obligation to report any story, but if they do, they are in debt and must provide the follow-up: What happened?
In this case, where are the journals that covered the Minister’s announcement about the Lokoja-Benin Road?
As I wrote last April, that road is but a sliver of the challenge before Umahi, it is an indication of whether he will leave Nigerian roads “much better or much worse.” It also tells us a lot about the Bola Tinubu administration.
The media cannot simply “hold the government accountable.” It must begin by holding itself accountable.
