BY OWEI LAKEMFA
THE TRANSFORMATIVE Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway is mired in endless controversies. This is the fate of great monuments and, I dare say, great leaders. So, my primary concerns here are not the hullabaloos about its actual cost and absence of biddings or, its ever-changing designs as it meanders through coast and land.
My interest here is its hugely successful naming ceremony. Africans take such a monumental event as the naming ceremony of a child, serious otherwise, it could be regarded a bastard. Fittingly, the projected 750-kilometre road has been named by the Tinubu Presidency as the “President Bola Ahmed Tinubu Coastal Highway.”
If Umahi’s logic is that the highway is named after President Tinubu because he dreamt about it and is constructing it, what is the logic in government tearing down the Abubakar Imam name of the airport in Minna and replacing it on Monday, March 11, 2024 with that of President Tinubu? The level of sycophancy and falsehood on the matter of this airport is quite amazing.
Federal Ministry of Works Minister, ‘Professor’ David Umahi, explained that the Federal Government decided to so name the highway because President Tinubu dreamt of the project twenty-seven years ago when he was Lagos State Governor.
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Umahi said: “It is one thing to dream and another thing to have the grace of God for you to actualize that your dream.” True. But has the coastal road, said by Umahi to be 47.4 kilometres completed from the Lagos end and, 30 kilometres nearing completion at the Calabar end, be said to have been actualized?
The Assistant Chief Engineer in the Ministry, Mr. Itam Patrick, had in April, 2026 announced to Nigerians that the road will be completed in thirty-six months; that is in the next three years. If that be the case, what is the hurry in naming a road that is less than seven percent completed? The Yorubas counsel that what you want to name a child, remains within you until it is born.
If Umahi’s logic is that the highway is named after President Tinubu because he dreamt about it and is constructing it, what is the logic in government tearing down the Abubakar Imam name of the airport in Minna and replacing it on Monday, March 11, 2024 with that of President Tinubu? The level of sycophancy and falsehood on the matter of this airport is quite amazing.
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For instance, the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation stated on its official website as at Sunday, July 26, 2026 that: “The Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Airport, Minna was built by the administration of Umaru Bago in Niger State and named after the President.” The truth is that this airport was built over thirty-five years ago and officially commissioned on June 20, 1990 by then Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida. That was when the Governor Bago, who reportedly built it, was a 16-year-old teenager.
Another bizarre angle in this illegal renaming of the airport after President Tinubu is that it is owned and operated by the Federal Airports Authority (FAAN). So, how can a state government that neither owns nor run the airport, hijack and rename it after President Tinubu?
The International Conference Centre (ICC) is one of the national symbols built in the centre of Abuja. On completion in 1991, it cost N240 million. It was renovated by the Tinubu administration in 2025 for N39 billion. When President Tinubu on June 10, 2025 reopened the renovated ICC, it was renamed The Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre (BATICC).
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But the Presidency was not selfish by naming the centre only after President Tinubu. It democratized it by naming the halls in the centre after Vice President Kashim Shettima, Senate President Godswill Akpabio, House of Representatives Speaker Tajudeen Abass and Chief Justice of Nigeria, Kudirat Kekere-Ekun. Thus, it ensured that the centre is a three-arms zone bearing the names of the leaders of the Executive, legislature and judiciary.
It reminds me of the 1818 sonnet, “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley describing the ruined statue of a once god-like Pharaoh. On the statue’s pedestal are the boastful words: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” But Shelley observed, “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
To mark its first year in office, the administration, in May 2024, named the 5.4-kilometre highway running from the Christian Ecumenical Centre, Abuja to Ring Road One, after President Tinubu. Equally that month, the Library and Resource Centre of the National Assembly was named after President Tinubu. At least, that will ensure that the President who was once a Senator, has a physically identifiable presence in the NASS complex.
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He has a similar presence in the Nigerian Immigration Service where its technology complex was named after him. Also, the Federal University of Nigerian Languages, Aba, Abia State Bill introduced in the House of Representatives, is named after the President. On January 16, 2026, President Tinubu approved the establishment of a new polytechnic which he named after himself the, ‘Bola Ahmed Tinubu Federal Polytechnic, Gwarinpa, Abuja.’ The polytechnic is still in the womb of time, but the name is known.
President Tinubu, on Thursday, January 23, 2025, inaugurated a new military barracks in Asokoro, Abuja named after himself, the “Bola Ahmed Tinubu Barracks.” The first two phases comprised sixteen Major Generals Quarters, thirty-four Brigadier Generals Quarters, sixty Major – Colonel Quarters and sixty 60 Family Lieutenant to Captain Quarters. There were also quarters for other ranks. The then Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Olufemi Oluyede, said the barracks was named after President Tinubu as a way of ‘giving honour to whom honour is due’.
Naming military barracks after individuals had become quite controversial leading to the April 16, 2003 decision of the Federal Government to reverse some of them. Then Minister of Defence, retired Lieutenant General Theophilus Danjuma had announced that: “Barracks should be named after important battles or campaigns where Nigerian Armed Forces participated…Only in exceptional cases should barracks be named after individuals. These exceptions shall be for purely military professional excellence and may only be conferred posthumously.” Subsequently, the barracks named after political figures and retired generals were reversed.
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Sometimes, powers that name public institutions after themselves or individuals, shoot themselves in the foot. For instance, when Lagos was the capital, powerful forces named the Nigeria Police headquarters after the second indigenous Inspector General (IG) Kam Salem. They did not envisage that the Federal capital may shift. So, when Abuja became the new capital, they tried to transfer the Kam Salem name from Lagos. Other usually silent forces rose up to insist that the new Abuja headquarters must be named after the first indigenous IG, Louis Edet.
I am not sure President Tinubu set out to name monuments after himself which has come to a quarterly average in his first three years in power. He should know, like the Preacher said; “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” which means all power is fleeting and transient.
It reminds me of the 1818 sonnet, “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley describing the ruined statue of a once god-like Pharaoh. On the statue’s pedestal are the boastful words: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” But Shelley observed, “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
