THE MINISTER WHO ANSWERS TO NO ONE: DAVID UMAHI AND THE ANATOMY OF IMPUNITY
Somebody close to the Minister of Works should pull him aside and tell him plainly: arrogance of this scale ends in only one place, and it is not the history books.
Consider the record. This is the man who handed Gilbert Chagoury’s Hitech the $13 billion Lagos–Calabar highway — the most expensive single project in Nigeria’s history — with no competitive bidding and no Federal Executive Council approval, in open defiance of the Public Procurement Act. He admitted it himself, then lectured the nation that he “works by reality, not sentiment.” Even Transparency International laughed.
This is the man a Federal High Court once ordered out of the Ebonyi Government House for absconding with a mandate that belonged to the PDP. The man on whose orders soldiers flogged civil servants at Onueke airport. The man who deployed EbubeAgu against his own critics and treats every question as an act of war.
When a businesswoman accused him of withholding N200 million and punishing her for refusing his advances, she was arrested — and, miraculously, recanted. When 26-year-old Mary Habila died in his Uburu compound in June, Nigeria heard nothing for two weeks, until Sahara Reporters broke the silence. The reported circumstances of her death, and the tug-of-war over her autopsy, cried out for a fearless independent inquiry — not threats of lawyers against those who asked. Her grieving family has since attributed her death to a heart condition, and I mourn with them. But a public servant who reaches first for lawyers and last for transparency has told us everything about how he understands power.
And what was his answer to a nation’s questions? A coronation. Last week his 28-year-old son Osborn was declared chairman of Ohaozara LGA — the very council containing the compound where Mary Habila died — in a state election where the APC “won” all 13 chairmanships. All thirteen. He was sworn in yesterday, with the proud minister beaming in the front row. This is not democracy; it is dynasty-building in broad daylight, a family annexing the ground beneath its own unanswered questions. Meanwhile, in Abakaliki, a businessman alleges his filling station was demolished under cover of “road expansion” — and a private plaza rose in its place.
Pompous. Entitled. And too intoxicated to grasp that the world is watching, and that every act of impunity drags every Nigerian’s name through the mud. He remains third on my list of five I predict will one day be carted off to jail in their dirty underpants — behind Wike, behind Tinubu, just ahead of the Senate President. Nigeria’s seismic change is coming. Two hundred million people cannot be held hostage by a handful of gangsters forever.
Letters from Stockholm 🇸🇪
#Umahi #OsbornUmahi #MaryHabila #CoastalHighway #Chagoury #Tinubu #Wike #Nigeria #Corruption #Impunity #TheKioSolution
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