The Pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, has faulted the Federal Government over the realignment of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway along the corridors of Ondo and Delta.

The frontline Yoruba group, while accusing the Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, of insincerity regarding the project, stated that with the project redirected from the coastlines of the two states, it exudes a scam, particularly with the proper execution of the highway project within the Lagos State axis.

Secretary General of the organisation, Sola Ebiseni, who spoke with newsmen at the Akure Airport, Ondo State, described it as unimaginable that the states whose resources were deployed for the project are being shortchanged while Lagos State was duly factored into the initial concept of the project.

Ebiseni said that archival records indicated that the road had since been proposed around 1900 when the Ilaje coastal territory of the present Ondo State was still part of Lagos Colony.

He said: “The road was designed in alignment with the telegraphic route to link Lagos Colony with the Southern Protectorate, whose headquarters was then incidentally at Calabar. An agreement to that effect was reached in 1900 when Sir William MacGregor, Governor of Lagos Colony, was on tour of the Ilaje eastern boundary of the Colony up to around the Benin River in Warri Division.

“The document was later signed on January 12, 1904 between Sir William MacGregor, Governor of Lagos Colony, and Sir Wyndham Roseberry of Southern Protectorate. President Tinubu has taken such a bold step in launching this historic road project, which, if faithfully implemented, will be the most monumental, particularly in the Niger Delta.

“But suddenly and most annoyingly, we now hear the Minister of Works in the media that the road would only follow the coastal route in the Lagos area but that the alignment would no longer follow the coastline from Ondo State to Delta and so on. Who takes such nonsense from the government?

“Why would Tinubu not be accused of the fact that the road is only a scam to open up more coastal real estate businesses in Lagos?”

Meanwhile, the Afenifere’s scribe, who spoke on the issues surrounding the group, particularly the recent appointments made by the leadership of the organisation, stated that no viable organisation, including political parties, is spared the bug of centrifugal forces today in our country.

Ebiseni stressed that Oba Oladipo Olaitan, as the new leader, has what it takes to navigate and ensure unity in the organisation.

He added that his emergence naturally solved the rumpus within the organisation.

“Afenifere is a welfarist socio-political organisation whose ideological stance it has maintained since 1951 with an unambiguous position on national issues,” he said.