By TONY AFEJUKU
Let me state from the outset one or two or three or more things about this composition I am composing on a rainy day that is a rainy day: The rain is raining rains where I am in a nameless riverine land that is not a nameless riverine land. The rain is raining and raging and raging and descending and descending. Lucky the Glitterer and unlucky the Glitterer at the same time! How is he sounding? Serious? Humorous? Or both at the same time? I am digressing, writing a parenthesis, doing an aside…. And my one or two or three or more thoughts disappear as the rain rains and rages and lands me where I am now – on President Tinubu’s Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway Mr. David Umahi is making in his make-believe world on our splendid president’s behalf. Oh! How our president believes the deception and every deception of the engineer, his engineer, the works minister who knows nothing about the terrain that is under his engineering view and spectacle.
President Tinubu’s coarse funnyman engineer has said numerous times that the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway has been re-designed to cut out the Ilaje areas in Ondo State and the Itsekiri territories in Delta State from the Coastal Highway because of the prohibitive cost it would take to accommodate the Ilaje and Itsekiri respective regions in the original budget. In other words, according to President Tinubu’s crude engineer-comedian, the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway has been re-designed. The new plan by-passes the Ilaje and Itsekiri territories entirely because incorporating them into the original design would be far too expensive.
Without mincing words, the Glitterer says openly here that this man called Engineer David Umahi, in addition to what has been stated above, must be a very dangerous enemy of the Ilajes and Itsekiris. On Saturday, 19 September 2026, I accidentally went to Eko Atlantic City. I navigated it, if I must say so, via the Lagos-Coastal Highway. What a Coastal Highway I found appealing on account of what I am calling here its art and scope as displayed for all lovers of beautiful beauty to see and applaud. Yet this coastal highway of very high quality even in its current state of incompleteness is what an engineer of double standards wants to deny the Ilajes and Itsekiris, whose homelands are homelands of oil wealth that is oil wealth.
I saw Dr. Benson Enukomehin, a smart Ilaje lawyer, on TVC give what I hereby call his sermon on why Ilajes (and Itsekiris) more than deserve the coastal highway. Dr. Enukomehin, a major champion of his people, knows their terrain in toto as a thorough Ilaje homeboy. He demolished Mr. David Umahi’s contrived argument with respect to the prohibitive cost it would take to incorporate Itsekiri and Ilaje territories in the budget. Lagos State, for example, as per its Atlantic City terrain, is not in any way different from the Ilaje and Itsekiri regions. In fact, Ahmadu Bello Way, Victoria Island, Lagos, which is the beginning of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway in every respect, shares a very similar coastal terrain with the Itsekiri and Ilaje homelands where the coastal highway was originally designed to pass through. And the catch? Lagos is not an oil-producing state – unlike Ondo and Delta States. Besides, the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway was meant for oil-producing coastal states that have for decades been politically discriminated against and economically deprived and robbed of their resources. The coastal highway that should and must remain coastal was expected to drag development to the riverine communities in every conceivable and inconceivable way. Itsekiri and Ilaje communities must no longer be victims of their robbers and oppressors. They must be free from all contriving.
These thoughts and more were part of the luxury of my questioning mind as I set no limit to the possible efforts, discoveries, and successes relating to the painted picture of the coastal highway meandering through the deprived oil-rich communities in a manner best known to this patriotic composer and wholesome Itsekiri and Ilaje citizens.
Let it be said loud and clear: the Glitterer is reflecting deeply on a piece of art or a vision that represents the stark contrast between wealth and poverty in the Nigerian oil coast, a reality intimately understood by the locals and the creator. Unmistakably, he is indulging in deep, unrestricted brainstorming and philosophical questioning about the future. The visual subject he and the wholesome Ilaje and Itsekiri citizens and champions of a supremely worthy cause are looking at and thinking about is a literal or metaphorical “painting” (the design, the “painted picture”) of a coastal highway – which runs through areas that are paradoxically oil-rich but deeply impoverished (“deprived oil-rich communities” in Ilaje and Itsekiri territories).
Will President Tinubu’s dean of roadless roads allow himself to be persuaded by the socio-economic inequality that abounds in our riverine communities, to which this social critique is drawing his attention in the hope that it will nullify his negative attitude toward our people and Niger Delta denizens as a whole? Will this social critique help the seeming hater of Itsekiris and Ilajes to have a change of heart and show them patriotic love? Will our one and only frontline dean of Niger Delta Coastal Highway now love Itsekiri and Ilaje peoples (indigenous ethnic groups of the Nigerian coastal oil regions), and demonstrate this love by his open admission that he now truly understands the complex reality of how infrastructure (the coastal highway) interacts with the neglected local population – a reality intimately understood by the locals and their champions he will now proudly be part of?
The Glitterer’s preliminary rhetorical thoughts on the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway should go a long way to re-illustrate his patriotic character and engineering feat and trait for the great benefit and betterment of our country. Our President and his appointee should re-speak their words to the advantage of Itsekiris and Ilajes. Then his name shall adorn Itsekiri and Ilaje stories for a long, long time. As for President Tinubu, his name shall be in the reservoir of new Itsekiri and Ilaje folklore for near eternity for giving geographical, infrastructural, political, commercial, economic, and moral justice to the oil-rich Itsekiri and Ilaje communities who earnestly want a complete modern life devoid of complete illusion.
These preliminary thoughts must end with the Glitterer’s outright mystical quotation to Itsekiris and Ilajes: “Have no fear, for where there is darkness, there is also equal light. That is the law of balance.” You will need this mystical thought to put you in supremely good stead in the coming days. The law of balance never fails.
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