The Labour Party Lagos State Governorship Candidate in 2023, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, has urged the Federal Government to stick to the original plan of 1.5 kilometres of the 700 kilometres of the Lagos-Calabar coastal road project.
He maintained that this would preserve the businesses, ecosystem and land that belonged to the people, as it would accommodate both the coastal road and beaches, with families continuing to have leisure and time together.
Rhodes-Vivour stated that this would also be of benefit to the state government as Small and Medium Scales(SMEs) businesses that are operating in Landmark Beachfront pay huge amounts of money in taxes to the Lagos State government.
Speaking with journalists, on Friday, Rhodes-Vivour stressed that the coastal road and beaches can co-exist, while expressing concern that there is a cynical suspicion about the way the Federal Government is going about the project.
He questioned the decision to award the contract to Gilbert Chagoury’s Hitech Construction Company Limited without meeting the minimum threshold of due procurement process of competitive bidding.
He said: “This is a place that was set up as far back as 2007 and has generated so much revenue to the operators and businesses, which has made them pay taxes to Lagos State government in the excess of over a billion naira yearly.
“That is aside from the employment of about 4,000 people directly and over 20,000 people indirectly. This is a place where families go to have leisure, which is scarce in Lagos State, because all the beaches are highly privatised as opposed to something that is available for the public.
“It will not take up to 1.5 kilometres of a 700-kilometre stretch for us to preserve all of these. But the speed at which they are sand filling shows that there is something else at play here and that is why we are here today to say that the government should work for the wellbeing of the people.
“If the plan was originally for this road to be on water corporation way, why so many jobs must be sacrificed in a situation where our economy is not creating jobs.”
