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Federal road construction across Nigeria has continued without interruption despite banditry in several parts of the country, Works Minister David Umahi said Saturday, crediting a presidential directive that deployed security personnel to protect contractors working on highway projects.
Umahi made the remarks in Enugu during a site inspection that took in the Enugu–Onitsha highway and the Eke Obinagu mega flyover, among other projects along the corridor.
He said President Bola Tinubu had personally instructed the national security adviser, service chiefs, and related authorities to ensure adequate cover for construction teams, adding that much of the security presence was deliberately kept out of sight. “Most security agents stay inside bushes and are not seen,” he said. “Work is therefore going on at various sites in accordance with the president’s directives.”
The minister pointed to nighttime concrete applications in northern states as evidence that security on those sites was holding.
With temperatures in parts of the north currently exceeding 45 degrees Celsius, he said daytime concrete work had become technically unviable, and that the shift to night operations would not have been possible without reliable ground security.
He warned that anyone who attempted to interfere with active sites would bear the consequences.
Read also: Southeast Presidency Must Be Earned Through Collaboration – Umahi
On the projects he inspected, Umahi said the Eke Obinagu flyover had reached 99 percent completion and that sections of the Enugu–Onitsha road were also approaching the finish line. He said President Tinubu would inaugurate the completed works in May.
The minister’s remarks carried an overtly political dimension. He urged the South-East to recognise what he called the president’s unprecedented infrastructure commitment to the zone and predicted the region would deliver more than 80 percent of its votes to Tinubu. “It will take someone like myself from the South-East to replicate President Tinubu’s unprecedented strides in the zone’s annals,” he said.
Chioma Nweze, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Community Engagement for the South-East, echoed the sentiment, saying the region owed Tinubu gratitude for the scale of road investment.
She cited the Enugu–Onitsha, Enugu–Umuahia–Aba–Port Harcourt, and Onitsha–Owerri corridors as roads that had begun to yield practical benefits — easier movement of farm produce, better connectivity between states, and broader economic activity across the zone.
Contractors and site supervisors present at the inspection committed to delivering within agreed timelines and acknowledged what they described as strong backing from the federal government.
