File: Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Temitope Ajayi.

The Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Media and Publicity, Temitope Ajayi, on Wednesday, responded to comments by the presidential candidate of the Peoples Redemption Party in the upcoming 2027 elections, Donald Duke, regarding the financial implications of the Lagos-Calabar Highway.

Ajayi’s rebuttal comes on the heels of Duke’s interview with Arise News on Tuesday, where he faulted the Federal Government for embarking on such a monumental project, saying the expense could be spent on other sectors.

The highway, which is a monumental project valued at N15 trillion, was renamed the President Bola Tinubu Coastal Highway.

Duke insisted that the project wouldn’t extend beyond the Epe area of Lagos State, recalling that there’s an existing road that links Lagos State to Calabar.

“Take the Lagos-Calabar highway. I know the country cannot afford it. You cannot build a road on the coast from Lagos to Calabar. I mean, you can’t even go through Bayelsa. Bayelsa is swamp. Even Yenagoa, the capital, is swamp. You’ll probably have to build about 100 or 200 bridges to go through those swamps.

“There is already a road to Calabar. I’ve driven from Lagos to Calabar several times. If the road is poor, fix it.

“I don’t think that road is going to go beyond Epe, and I think the road serves other purposes because I drove once on the road and all I saw on the right flank going towards Epe was land reclamation and all that,” he stated.

The former Cross River State governor, who stayed in office from 1999 to 2007, further criticised the rate of borrowing from international money lenders, saying, “The World Bank is now cautioning us. They probably won’t give us anything more, so we are going through different routes to get funding from other sources. Because our revenue collection system is poor, we do the basic thing: we tax you on profit.

“You have got to prioritise and focus on what is required. The money being spent on that would be better spent providing electricity or upgrading the healthcare system. So, prioritise, focus your priorities, recalibrate your revenue system, and look at the horrendous cost of gas.

“The governance structure must change. Look at the high cost of governance—why do you need a bicameral legislature? You don’t need it. You can do with only a Senate; you don’t need a House of Representatives. Restructuring; it’s imperative. We need to restructure to come to terms with our circumstance.”

In his response via his X handle on Wednesday, Ajayi corrected that the project would go beyond Epe as against Duke’s remarks, adding that the project had reached Ogun State and progress is being made to extend it further.

He tweeted, “Former Governor Donald Duke, who wants to become President on the banner of an unviable political platform, has also joined the chorus of those saying the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway will not go beyond Lagos State.

“I think politics makes a lot of people say loads of what they don’t mean or believe in. They just talk for the sake of talking or because of bad politics. There is actually no sense in arguing against reality.

“While Duke was talking on TV that the coastal highway won’t go beyond Epe, the project has reached Ogun State, and work is going on on the Ondo and Akwa-Ibom states’ sections of the coastal road.”