David Umahi Launches 40-Man Coastal Highway Guards While Bandits Overrun Nigeria

Minister of Works David Umahi has launched the Coastal Highway Guards, a 40‑man security team tasked with protecting the Lagos‑Calabar Coastal Highway from vandals, hawkers and loiterers. Led by retired Major General Adekunle Shodunke, the guards will maintain a visible presence along the highway, report suspicious activities, and restrict motorcycles, tricycles, hawking and loitering. Umahi stressed that this is “a full time job to protect National Assets,” not an empowerment programme.

But while the government scrambles to guard asphalt with 40 officers, the rest of Nigeria burns. On the same day Umahi launched the coastal guards, terrorists struck again, killing five soldiers in Borno State. Just days earlier, bandits killed 13 farmers in Benue and 24 in Zamfara. Over 300 farmers have been killed or expelled from their farms in recent months. Schoolchildren remain in captivity in Oyo, Kogi and across the north. The government cannot secure schools, cannot protect farmers, cannot stop terrorists from overrunning communities, yet it has found 40 officers to guard a road.

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Umahi claimed the guards would prevent people from sleeping on the highway, saying: “Last night, we were there with the National Assembly members by 11 pm; people were sleeping on the coastal highway. It must stop.” People are sleeping on the highway because they have nowhere else to go. People are hawking on the highway because they cannot find work. People are loitering on the highway because the government has failed to provide jobs, housing and security. But rather than address the root causes of poverty and displacement, the government has chosen to criminalise the victims.

This is the Tinubu administration’s idea of governance: guard the road, ignore the people. Protect the infrastructure, abandon the citizens. Deploy 40 officers to a highway while bandits run riot across the country. The Lagos‑Calabar Coastal Highway is a multi‑billion‑naira project plagued by controversy over its inflated cost, opaque procurement and environmental impact. Now the government is spending even more money to guard it, while Nigerians are being slaughtered in their farms and abducted from their schools. The Coastal Highway Guards are not a solution to Nigeria’s insecurity crisis. They are a distraction from the government’s failure to protect its people.

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