Tinubu’s Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway Useless To Ondo – LP Guber Candidate

The candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the November 16 governorship election in Ondo state, Sola Ebiseni, on Monday warned that the state may not benefit from the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway being constructed by the President Bola Tinubu-led federal government.

Ebiseni gave the warning in Akure, the state capital, while addressing journalists on the readiness of his party for the forthcoming election.

The LP standard bearer described the coastal highway project by the Tinubu administration as the most visionary project for the people of Niger Delta.

But he noted that the road might not properly pass through the coastal area of the state.

“Incidentally, candidates of the leading political parties are from the coastal area of the state. Politics apart, the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway by the Tinubu administration is the most visionary project for the people of Niger Delta.

“The Ondo state portion of about 100 kilometres and longest shoreline stands to benefit the most, particularly in the area of coastal investments and management of coastal erosion.

“But available maps of the alignment show that the road may not appropriately traverse the Ondo coastal portion,” Ebiseni said.

According to him, all efforts by leaders of thought from the state, particularly the people of Ilaje Local Government Area to ensure justice proved abortive.

The LP candidate accused the state governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, of keeping silent and not doing anything about the alignment.

He said: “The Governor has been indifferent. I personally suggested to him since May to call a meeting to brief our people and send representations like other states and communities to the federal government on the proper and beneficial alignment.

“Our Governor is busy celebrating a Kilometre of concrete walkway where a project that will enhance establishment of deep sea port, coastal investments, redress the coastal erosion in Aiyetoro and other places and impact our lives and civilization for good is being allowed to slip by. We need a governor with the proper understanding and clout to make things work.”

Ebiseni expressed confidence that he would win the gubernatorial poll, saying LP was a household political party in the state.

“Labour Party is the first political party with the grace of being elected twice for governorship from 2009 to 2017. My Deputy, Dayo Awude, and I were commissioners in the government headed by Dr Olusegun Mimiko.

“Our campaign is woven around the achievements of that government in education, health, integrated rural development, women and youths empowerment.

“Under the Labour Party government, education was absolutely free up to secondary school level with the state government paying WAEC fees which the present government refused to pay resulting in monumental national embarrassment where WAEC had to withhold the results of children.

“We are reminding them that in the state university and polytechnic, by deliberate policy, tuition fees were pegged at twenty thousand Naira compared to the sum of two hundred thousand.

“Our Mega schools are speaking for us and the students are not likely to forget that bursaries were last paid in 2016 at the end of the LP administration. Parents will remember our free bus shuttles for pupils throughout the state and vote for us.

“Mothers won’t forget that their deliveries in our hospitals were free of charge compared with about N250,000 they are paying today. Our first class mother and child hospitals and other health facilities in every ward and rural communities are the only medical outreaches seen in most parts of the state,” he said.