Works Minister David Umahi has deployed 40 Coastal Highway Guards to the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway.
Umahi launched the guards on Sunday, August 9, 2026, with 40 officers assigned to monitor the road and report vandalism and other illegal activities.
Retired General Adekunle Shodunke leads the team.
Umahi said people had removed blocks and rods from the project, damaged fences and walked onto sections of the highway.
“We have had very terrible, unpatriotic elements removing the blocks, breaking the fence, removing the rods and treading on the highway. This must stop,” Umahi said.
He ordered the guards to stop commercial motorcycles, tricycles, hawking and loitering on the highway.
“Their job is that no keke on the coastal highway, no motorcycle on the coastal highway, and no loitering,” Umahi said.
Umahi said the guards would work as full-time staff responsible for protecting government infrastructure.
“This is not an ‘empowerment programme’. It is a full-time job to protect national assets of the government,” Jubril Gawat quoted Umahi as saying.
The Federal Government deployed the guards as construction continues on the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway.
The 750-kilometre highway will run from Lagos through Ogun, Ondo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers and Akwa Ibom to Cross River.
Hitech Construction Company Limited is building the highway under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Works.
