Gov Sanwo-Olu Launches N780 Billion Waterway and Budgets ₦55.4 Billion for Lawmakers’ Homes, Seven Months Later, Nothing Has Moved

Secrets Reporters

October 2025, and the cameras were out. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu formally launched Omi-Eko, the €410 million transformation of the Lagos waterways with European money from the AFD, the EU and the EIB alongside the state’s own, dredged channels, new terminals, an economic corridor on water. Seven months later, an independent maritime investigation went looking for the construction. It found none. The project’s own head of communications confirmed it: contractors were not yet on ground. A September 2026 report still describes the works in the future tense. The launch happened but the project did not.

Omi-Eko is not the only announcement in this condition. It is one of three.

The second is the Red Line rail extension. Phase 1 of Agbado to Oyingbo, 27 kilometres was commissioned in February 2024 and runs. At that commissioning, the contract for Phase 2, from Oyingbo toward Marina and the National Theatre, was signed with CCECC. That was more than two years ago. In the whole of 2026, no public trace of Phase 2 construction has surfaced: no groundbreaking, no inspection tour, no site photographs. As of September 2026, the line still ends at Oyingbo; the extension toward Marina is not running. The contract was signed at a ceremony and that was the last anyone heard of it.

The third is the most expensive announcement in the bunch, and it is not for the public at all. The 2026 budget carries N35.4 billion for the construction of permanent legislative quarters for the State House of Assembly for architectural design, soil tests, pile work, consultancy plus N20 billion for a new fence and drainage channels around the complex. By the end of Q1, N500 million had already been spent on the fence line. A pre-qualification tender was published in 2025. But there has been no groundbreaking, no announced contract award, no contractor’s name, no site-progress photographs and property advertisements still describe the Ori-Oke/Ogudu site as “proposed quarters.” Half a billion naira spent on a fence around a project that has not broken ground.