Minister of Works David Umahi and Senator Adams Oshiomhole (Edo North) engaged in a tense verbal confrontation on Wednesday during a Senate session reviewing the N15 trillion Lagos-Calabar coastal highway project.
The disagreement erupted as Oshiomhole questioned the minister over concerns surrounding funding transparency and project delays, triggering a sharp exchange between the two All Progressives Congress (APC) members.
As questioning intensified, Umahi appeared visibly irritated and challenged the tone of the interrogation. “Sir, are you judging or asking me questions?” he asked while Oshiomhole pressed further.
The senator responded firmly, saying, “You are not entitled to interrupt me.”
The situation escalated when Umahi accused Oshiomhole of being disrespectful. “You can’t use foul language on me. I’m a distinguished Nigerian. You cannot speak to me in that manner,” he said.
Oshiomhole, a former APC national chairman, pushed back, as some lawmakers and the committee chairman appeared to side with him, cautioning the minister over his remarks.
“Mind your language. You were in this senate for how long? Two months. Two-month senator,” one legislator quipped, drawing attention to Umahi’s brief stint in the upper chamber before his ministerial appointment.
The committee chairman eventually stepped in, calling for calm and urging both men to maintain decorum as proceedings continued.
Shifting focus, Senator Oshiomhole praised President Bola Tinubu for discontinuing the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited’s tax credit funding approach for road infrastructure, describing the tax credit model as “very difficult to monitor transparency.”
Minister Umahi, however, defended the administration’s adoption of private sector funding, calling it a step in the right direction. He acknowledged delays in fund disbursement, attributing them to the federal ministry of finance’s failure to release allocated funds, and assured lawmakers that the president was not aware of the bottleneck.
