No more free-for-all. The Federal Government has put boots on the ground to stop vandals, hawkers and okada riders from turning its showpiece coastal road into another abused federal highway.

In a move that signals just how seriously Abuja is taking its biggest road project in decades, the Federal Government has deployed 40 specially trained Coastal Highway Guards to police the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway.

According to cbinews.tv, the Minister of Works, Senator Dave Umahi, unveiled the new squad on Sunday during the official launch in Lagos, as disclosed in an X post by Jubril A. Gawat, Senior Special Assistant on New Media to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu.

And this isn't your usual "empowerment" gig.

As the Minister bluntly put it: “This is not an empowerment programme. It is a full-time job to protect national assets of the government.”

So, what will they actually be doing?

The 40-man team, led by retired General Adekunle Shodunke, will maintain a 24/7 presence along the corridor, working hand in hand with security agencies in Lagos State. Their brief is pretty clear – monitor and report vandalism, flag any suspicious activity, restrict hawking and loitering, and stop commercial tricycles and motorcycles from using the highway.

Why This Matters – The Bigger Picture

For context, this isn't just any road. The Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway is a 750-kilometre monster project designed to link Lagos to Calabar, cutting across about nine coastal states. It’s one of the most ambitious infrastructure undertakings since the old Lagos-Benin Expressway of the 70s and 80s, which, let’s be honest, suffered exactly the kind of abuse the government is now trying to prevent.

Construction kicked off in March 2024, with Hitech Construction Company Limited handling the job. The first section – a 47.47km six-lane carriageway from Victoria Island to Lekki, complete with a 25-metre median reserved for a future railway line – was commissioned in May 2025.

The price tag? Eye-watering. The whole project is estimated at N15 trillion. Section I in Lagos alone was procured for N1.068 trillion, Section II for N1.6 trillion, and Sections IIIA and IIIB jointly for N1.33 trillion. The project has even pulled in international cash, including a $100 million allocation under a $266.7 million ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development facility, plus another $100 million approval in July 2025 for the 47.7km Lagos stretch.

It also just got a political rebrand. As **cbinews.tv** reports, the Federal Ministry of Works recently renamed the corridor after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu following the completion of Section One, a decision announced on July 16, 2026, at the Ministry’s headquarters in Abuja.

With work now ongoing simultaneously in Lagos, Cross River and Akwa Ibom, protecting what’s already built is crucial. Nigeria has a long, frustrating history of newly built roads being stripped of manhole covers, streetlights, and barriers within months.

This time, the government says it won’t wait for that to happen.

Credit: Original reporting by cbinews.tv

#LagosCalabarCoastalHighway #FG #DaveUmahi #CoastalHighwayGuards #NigeriaInfrastructure #LagosNews #TinubuHighway #CBINewsTV