KILLING A BABY BEFORE ARRIVAL: THE IRONIC VANDALISATION OF THE LAGOS–CALABAR COASTAL HIGHWAY AND THE CASE FOR HIGHWAY GUARDS’ DEPLOYMENT// By Aderogba Adebayo Taofik, mni

To build a nation is to wager on the future. To allow that future to be dismantled while it is still being erected is a betrayal of both present sacrifice and posterity. Nation-building is a deliberate act. It requires capital, vision, and time. It also requires protection. The Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway is the product of a focused leadership, envisioned and boldly executed by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR. Subsequent Nigeria governemnt faltered in this stance due to lack of the courage to embarked on this gigantic project and other road projects like the Sokoto–Badagry Super Highway, to mention but few.

The Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway, conceived as a 700-kilometre artery to bind Nigeria’s coastline from Lagos to Cross River is such a stake. It is projected not merely as asphalt and concrete, but as a corridor of commerce, tourism, energy logistics, and regional integration. It is a signature infrastructure project conceived to connect nine coastal states, decongest the Apapa corridor, and unlock the economic potential of Nigeria’s shoreline — is at once a symbol of ambition and a test of our capacity to safeguard public assets.

Yet even before its completion, the project has become a theater of attrition, a target of vandalisation and systematic pilferage.

Yet even as sections remain under construction, reports of vandalisation and theft of materials have emerged along the right-of-way. Reinforcements, drainage culverts, signage, solar fittings, and earth-moving equipment have been targeted. In some instances, communities have reported the pilfering of iron rods and the sabotage of perimeter demarcations.

This is more than petty theft. It is an assault to our collective future as a people. Where is our sense of patriotism as citizens? What type of human beings are we in Nigeria? We need a national reorientaion to recalibrate our mindsets and enhance our sense of patriotism. National assets belong to me and you, it is our collective sweat, our collective patrimony, it must be seen as such and protected from the greediness of a few bad elements.

Why the Vandalisation Matters

Economic Sabotage: Every stolen culvert or damaged piling translates to cost overruns and delays. The highway is not being built for today alone. It is being built for logistics, tourism, fisheries, and regional trade for the next 50 years. To vandalise it is to tax unborn generations.

Security Risk: An unprotected construction corridor becomes a haven for criminality. Open excavations, abandoned materials, and unmanned equipment attract not just scavengers, but also kidnappers and vandals who use the chaos as cover.

Erosion of Public Trust: When citizens see infrastructure being destroyed before completion, confidence in government’s ability to deliver erodes. The project risks being perceived not as a public good, but as a site of plunder.

The Deployment of Highway Guards: A Necessary Intervention From Reaction to Strategy

In response, the Federal Government and project contractors have begun the employment of dedicated Highway Guards — a specialized security outfit tasked with 24-hour surveillance of the construction corridor from Lagos through Ogun, Ondo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa Ibom to Cross River. This is not a cosmetic measure. It is a strategic necessity.

This is a prudent and overdue measure. The role of the Highway Guards must go beyond mere presence. The mandate of these guards must transcend mere sentry duty. Their function should be threefold:

1. Custodial Protection  

To secure storage facilities, batching plants, and critical installations against theft and willful damage. A construction site left unguarded is an invitation.

2. Community Integration  

To work in concert with traditional institutions, community development committees, and youth leadership along the nine coastal states. Infrastructure is best protected not by force alone, but by ownership. When host communities see the highway as their asset, they become its first line of defense.

3. Intelligence and Deterrence  

To collaborate with the Nigeria Police, NSCDC, and other security agencies in identifying and dismantling syndicates that trade in stolen construction materials. A visible, uniformed presence alters behaviour. Visibility itself is a deterrent. A disciplined, well-kitted presence alters the risk calculus of the vandals when the risk of their apprehension is real.

For this to succeed, the Highway Guards must be well-equipped, adequately remunerated, properly trained, subjected to strict oversight and held to account.. A security architecture that is underfunded or compromised becomes complicit in the very vandalism it was created to prevent and will become part of the problem.

Beyond Guards: A Civic Responsibility

Guards can patrol a road, but they cannot police a mindset. The long-term survival of the Lagos–Calabar Highway will depend on a civic compact. Government must communicate to the citizenry that the project not a federal imposition, but that the road belongs to the people of the South-South, South-West, and indeed all of Nigeria, it is our collective patrimony. Schools, traditional councils, and the media must frame the highway as what it is: a generational national asset.

Security personnel can patrol, but they cannot police an entire 700-kilometer coastline alone. The long-term protection of the Lagos–Calabar Highway will require civic reorientation.  Media should track progress, and the law must be firm: those caught vandalizing public infrastructure must face prosecution, not settlement.

On a final note, the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway is an act of faith in Nigeria’s geographic and economic destiny. To build it and then to watch it be cannibalized would be the cruelest irony. It is intended to be a corridor of commerce and connectivity. It cannot fulfill that destiny if it is being dismantled at the same time it is being built.

The deployment of Highway Guards is therefore both protective, symbolic and it is not an admission of failure. It is an acknowledgment of reality that development without protection is expenditure without return. It is a declaration that President Bola Ahamed Tinubu’s administration intends not only to build, but to preserve. 

If we are to leave behind infrastructure rather than ruins, then we must guard what we are building with the same intentionality with which we conceived it. If we are to bequeath infrastructure rather than relics, then we must defend, with equal vigor, both the blueprint and the bricks.

Construction without protection is expenditure without legacy. To build is governance. To protect is patriotism.

About the Author: Comrade Adebayo Taofik Aderogba, mni, is a unionist in the food, beverage, and tobacco industry, with professional expertise in logistics and supply chains. He is also a policy research and public affairs analyst, an advocate for good governance, and a chieftain of the Oyo APC. He writes from Ward 12, Ibadan North Federal Constituency, Oyo State, Nigeria.