I have been watching David Umahi for a long time. I did not want to write this on the strength of his manners alone, because bad manners are not a crime in Nigeria; otherwise, half the cabinet would be in Kuje. But the record has grown too long and too consistent for a man who sits on one of the largest spending portfolios in the Federal Republic. It is time the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission did its job, if it still remembers what that job is.
Let me start with the money, because that is where every Nigerian story begins.
The ₦60 billion question
On September 25, BusinessDay published an investigation into a company called Reinforced Global Resources Limited. Using the federal GovSpend platform, the paper found that the company received ₦60.08 billion from the Ministry of Works in 27 payments between 2024 and 2026. The ministry accounts for its entire recorded federal payment history. BusinessDay says it found no federal contracts in the company’s name between its incorporation in 2011 and 2023, and that its first ministry contract came in April 2024, about eight months after Umahi took office.
The company’s managing director, Joshua Okoro, publicly campaigned for Umahi in the 2023 elections. BusinessDay also reports that the firm was a significant beneficiary of Umahi’s administration when he was governor of Ebonyi. The paper says payments were released ahead of progress certificates, and a procurement expert it quoted, Lukman Adefolahan, says the awards breached the Public Procurement Act 2007 and the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Those are BusinessDay’s findings and its source’s opinion, and I report them as such.
BusinessDay says it sent right-of-reply requests to the ministry and the company on August 24, and that it later sent the report to Umahi on September 30. None answered. The Human and Environmental Development Agenda has called for an independent investigation. As of the latest reports, the EFCC and the ICPC have said nothing.
This is not an accusation from a blogger. It is a national business newspaper citing the government’s own spending records. Somebody in a position of authority should be asking the minister to explain it under oath.
The EFCC case nobody has connected
There is a second thread. In July, the EFCC arraigned Egwuche Gladys, Group Managing Director of Brass Engineering and Construction Nigeria Limited, at the Federal High Court in Enugu. The EFCC alleges she and the company received $600,000 in twelve cash payments of $50,000 each, between March 13 and April 11, 2023, as part payment for a granite stone-crushing line sold to a joint venture of Patan Nigeria Limited and Reinforced Global Resources. The cash payments allegedly exceeded the legal threshold and bypassed the banking system. She pleaded not guilty, and the trial is set for November 11.
Two points of care. Reinforced Global Resources is named as a buyer, not a defendant. And Umahi is not accused of anything in that case. But Brass Engineering was founded by Umahi, who resigned from it in 2011, the year Reinforced Global Resources was incorporated. I do not conclude. I ask whether anyone at the EFCC has put the two files side by side, and I want the minister’s relationship with both firms examined and answered under oath.
A road with no price and a moving route
Now the coastal highway, which Umahi oversees and which I have written about for a year.
The Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway went to Hitech Construction, a Chagoury company, through what Umahi calls restrictive bidding, not an open tender. At the outset, he told Nigerians that Hitech would finance it. Public money has been committed since. In October 2025, when Arise anchor Rufai Oseni asked him for the cost per kilometre, Umahi called the question nonsensical, told Oseni he was too small to be reported to the President, and described himself as a professor in the field. Days later, he gave a figure of ₦7.5 billion per kilometre.
This week brought another change. Umahi announced that President Tinubu had directed the road to follow the existing East-West Road from the Ondo boundary into Edo, a corridor of about 104 kilometres including a 45-kilometre Benin bypass, with sections raised by about two metres against flooding. The Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA) has asked the National Assembly to summon him over it. It wants to know whether the technical assessments were done before public money was committed to the original route. Umahi’s answer is that nothing has been realigned. He says the President has added 400 kilometres, and that a separate diversion in Ogun and Ondo was needed because the original route crossed pits more than 100 metres deep. Senator Adams Oshiomhole, a member of Umahi’s own party, has again accused the minister of bias in how road money is allocated, saying new roads are favoured over rehabilitating the ones people drive on.
When a project has no open tender, no published price per kilometre and a route that changes after award, the question is not whether it should be audited. The question is why it has not been.
A son made chairman
On August 22, Osborn Umahi, the minister’s son, was declared chairman of Ohaozara Local Government Area in the minister’s home council, after an election in which the APC was the only party on the ballot. It won all 13 chairmanships and all 171 councillor seats in Ebonyi. The PDP and APGA called it a mono-party poll held in defiance of court judgments.
Umahi’s own account is that Governor Francis Nwifuru gave his son the post as a gesture of gratitude, that he has told his son to sign nothing the governor has not approved, and that his son has promised to take no salary. In the same breath, he boasted that he had killed the PDP in Ebonyi and would not let it come back. I will let readers decide whether that is a denial or an admission. In an election with one party, the voters had no choice in the matter.
What the minister has said, and what he has not
In fairness, Umahi has not been charged with any offence, and the BusinessDay findings are not court findings. He has defended the highway’s procurement, its route and its cost in public. The Works Ministry’s silence on the Reinforced Global Resources payments is what I object to. He has not answered BusinessDay’s letters, or the question that matters: how a company with no previous federal client came to be paid ₦60 billion in two years.
I have never met David Umahi, and nothing I write is personal. I served in the presidency and the National Assembly, and I swore then that if corruption ever returned to swallow this country, I would not keep quiet. It has, and I will not.
The Solution
I am asking for five things.
One. The EFCC and the ICPC should open a formal investigation into every payment the Ministry of Works has made to Reinforced Global Resources Limited since April 2024, including mobilisation paid before progress certificates, the bids and procurement approvals, and the minister’s past and present relationship with its owners and with Brass Engineering.
Two. The full Hitech contract for the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway, the price per kilometre, the financing terms and the file approving the East-West Road route change should be published, and the National Assembly should summon the minister as HURIWA has asked.
Three. The minister’s Code of Conduct Bureau asset declarations, as governor and as minister, should be published. If he has nothing to hide, he loses nothing.
Four. The Ministry of Works should publish every contract awarded to companies linked to political associates of its minister, with the competing bids and the completion status of each.
Five. Anyone holding credible evidence of wrongdoing should place it before the EFCC, the ICPC and the National Assembly, in the open, so that these questions are settled by documents and not by rumour.
The allegations in this piece are allegations. Umahi has not been charged. BusinessDay’s findings are reported as its findings. But a man who controls one of the largest budgets in the country and has not answered the questions put to him about where the money went has used up the benefit of the doubt. Investigate him. Now.
Nigeria belongs to Nigerians.
This is a United Continental Post column. It draws on BusinessDay Investigations (September 25), BusinessDay’s follow-up on the EFCC and ICPC response, the HEDA Resource Centre’s statement, EFCC statements on the Enugu arraignment as reported by TVC News, Sahara Reporters and The Sun, ThisDay, The Sun, Arise News, Leadership and TheCable on Umahi’s public statements, Vanguard and PM News on Senator Oshiomhole’s remarks, The Guardian, Realnews and TheCable on the highway route and HURIWA’s demand, and The Whistler and Arise News on the Ebonyi council elections. Umahi has not been charged with any offence, and has not publicly answered the BusinessDay report. Reinforced Global Resources Limited and its managing director have not been charged in the EFCC case discussed. The author’s account of his service in the presidency and National Assembly is his own.
