Fashola, Bi-Courtney and Lagos-Ibadan Road

 

The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is unarguably one of the most important road arteries in the country. At some point, it links nearly the whole of Nigeria’s business community to its commercial capital, Lagos. Its uniqueness and prime status lies in the fact that although it is located in the Yoruba country of Nigeria’s south-west region, it is neither a regional road, nor a Yoruba road nor a southern road.
Rather, it lays a solid claim to being called a pan-national road for it serves the economic interest of all peoples of Nigeria irrespective of their proximity to, or distance away from, it. 

Nigerians living far away from it in places like Maiduguri, Sokoto, Calabar, Kaura Namoda and Port- Harcourt, who do not physically use the road, nevertheless enjoy the economic benefits which its existence facilitates. Therefore, if for any economic, political or whatever reason it is decided that it is only one road that will be constructed or rehabilitated any budget year, no one will begrudge that road being accorded the number one priority. So vital is this expressway to Nigeria that when it catches cold, the whole nation shivers as she has been shivering for some time now.
It is therefore hardly surprising that it is one of the ‘’200 Goodluck Jonathan roads’’ spread across the country which the Buhari government inherited and which the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Raji  Fashola, has listed as one of the priority roads that will be completed this budget year. As a Nigerian who uses that road and who recognizes its critical importance to the country and the harm its long neglect has done to the country, I am a bit worried that in deciding to complete that road, Fashola seems to be glossing over one of the critical factorsthat has, for some time now, stalled work on it. Fashola said at a budget session with the House of Representatives’ committees on Power, Works and Housing and FERMA that the road is ‘problematic’.
However, having identified the problem impeding progress of work on the road, Fashola did not go a step further to tell Nigerians and the legislators what actions, if any, he and the Federal Government, have taken or intend to take, to address the underlying problem. This is worrisome because this failure could end up putting a permanent full stop to any further work on the road.
And what is it that has made the completion of the road, in the words of Fashola, ‘problematic’?  A few years ago, 2009 to be precise, a concession agreement was entered into between the Federal Government and Bi-Courtney Highway Services Limited for the rehabilitation of the road. Somewhere along the line, according to reports, work on the road stalled because the Federal Government could not fulfil its contractual obligation to Bi-Courtney. It could not pay it for work done as stipulated in the agreement. 
As is often the case in our country where a thin line separates politics from business, the concession was terminated by the Jonathan administration without allegedly following the due process and settling Bi-Courtney. Bi-Courtney went to court to protest the termination and demanded that it be compensated. It got a court injunction in its favour. The government went ahead nevertheless and entered into a new concession agreement with another firm known as Motorways Limited without reaching peace with Bi-Courtney.
Bi-Courtney again went to court and got yet another favourable judgment. Knowing the legal impediments that have frozen work on the road as Fashola does, one therefore expects that the action-oriented former governor and now minister, would have paused a little to sort things out before proceeding so as not to take one step forward and two or more backwards later. If you know the problem that have made a matter ‘problematic’, wisdom dictates that you address the recognized problem before you do anything else. I know that persons who are anxious to achieve, such as Fashola, operate by the maxim that it is better to err on the side of positive action than to err on the side of non-action or inaction. But in this particular matter where a legal landmine has been buried against hasty movement, the right thing to do is to err on the side of caution. Fashola should first seek to de-mine before he can think of what next to do that will be fair, just and legal to all the parties involved.
From the story of this sordid transaction, there is a noticeable tragedy of errors on the part of the Federal Government with no less than five parties involved, including RCC, Julius Berger and the people and economy of Nigeria. Bi-Courtney appears to be the most injured of the parties. And Bi-Courtney, we must note, is owned by one of the biggest lawyers in the country who knows his right and will not let go easily, not when he has two favourable court judgments in his pocket. It will therefore be in the interest of all, especially the good people of Nigeria, for these entanglements to be first sorted out so that we will not be forced to describe the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway as an ill-fated road project. Speed must be achieved against the background of rule of law and following the due process.
If there is any matter pending between the FG and the concessioners, Bi-Courtney, as Fashola himself admitted, sometime should be spent to first deal honestly, fairly and justly with Bi-Courtney before any other action can follow. We all understand the person of Fashola, his determination to achieve and the haste of the APC FG to begin to point to success stories to Nigerians who are anxious to begin to number Buhari’s concrete and ‘eye-marking’ projects.
It is a good thing that Fashola himself is not a small lawyer. He is among the best of the senior lawyers we have in the country. He is, besides, an astute administrator with a social conscience and the skills to negotiate complicated business and political deals. The time has come for all of these his justly famous competencies to be in evidence on this matter so that the Lagos-Ibadan road will not remain the scar on the conscience of Nigeria that it is today.