Bayelsa Governor Douye Diri is pushing back on one of the loudest critics of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project. Former Cross River Governor Donald Duke had argued the highway was simply unbuildable, pointing to the swampy, waterlogged terrain of the Niger Delta as a dealbreaker. Diri disagrees, and he has receipts.
The governor is pointing to roads and bridges already constructed under similar conditions right there in Bayelsa as proof that the project is far from impossible. His argument is straightforward: if engineers have already laid infrastructure across the same kind of challenging terrain in his state, the coastal highway is not the engineering fantasy Duke is making it out to be.
The debate puts two prominent southern Nigerian voices on opposite sides of one of the country's most talked-about infrastructure proposals. Whether Diri's examples from Bayelsa will be enough to shift the conversation remains to be seen.
Originally published by Premium Times.