David Umahi must be the most popular minister in the Tinubu administration. He’s the Minister of Works and if there is anything called luck, he has found it with President Bola Tinubu. His recommendation of Tinubu and his policies, which many Nigerians who voted for him in 2023 have said are very harsh, have found commendations on the lips of David Umahi.
Some Nigerians have said David Umahi’s ministry is also the richest in Tinubu’s cabinet. But so has also David Umahi been very controversial. Umahi is not a first-comer to government. He was deputy governor from 2011 to 2015, and two terms Governor of Ebonyi State from where he immediately went to serve as Minister of Works.
Some Igbos have said Ebonyi, where Umahi served as governor, is the poorest state in the Southeast where the people are very hardworking and very ambitious. But they say Umahi served the state very diligently. Umahi came into the Federal Ministry of Works with impressive credentials.
He contested the presidential primaries of the APC which produced Bola Tinubu first as the flag bearer of the party and the president of the country. Umahi became more noticeable when he spoke at the top of his voice to the press: “God has told me to contest as president but he didn’t tell me I will win.” David Umahi immediately caught the attention of the attention of some in the Christian community who had been angling for the church to produce a president.
When Umahi didn’t win the nomination, he aligned with Bola Tinubu. His alignment produced results because when Bola Tinubu won, he appointed him as the Minister of Works, the first time in decades that an Igbo will get the Works ministry. This will obviously address the infrastructure deficiency in the East which the Igbo have complained of over the years. But with Umahi’s popularity and favour with the president also came unprecedented controversy which has continued to shock some of his Christian colleagues, especially those in the Pentecostal bloc.
The Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway was the first controversy. It is alleged that the contract was not bid on and was rushed through because the president was interested in giving the contract to his friend, Gilbert Chargoury. It was also alleged that the contract, which was initially said to be contractor-financed, was later changed to Nigeria providing counterpart finance. Critics see that as a sleight of hand.
Being a professing Christian in the midst of such unholy allegations was enough controversy for Minister David Umahi. Is David Umahi a real or putative Christian? But if that was controversial, the next two cases that involved ladies are devastating for the minister. The first lady in question alleged that she had supplied some gift items to the minister when he served as governor to the tune of N200 million for which she did not receive payment. She topped that allegation with another that the minister made a sexual advance toward her.
The woman alleged the minister approached her with only a towel tied to his waist in the dark of the night in the hotel room. Thereafter she was arrested by the police and later retracted her claims against the minister. Human-rights activists have alleged that the woman was arm-twisted and oppressed. That she didn’t retract willingly.
The current case is volcanic on the minister’s career and it raises many questions of probity. It questions the way things are done in Nigeria and raises questions about integrity and competence. It explains why our bureaucracy collapsed and is not helping the system again.
Minister David Umahi has two nurses who minister to his health according to the account of the minister. They were recruited by the David Umahi University Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, named after the minister in his home state of Ebonyi. President Bola Tinubu seems to enjoy honouring himself with public institutions. The University was named after the approval of the president. Umahi has replicated this by naming the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, which is yet to be completed, after the president. Some think Nigeria might be named after Bola Tinubu sometime.
The two nurses, one from Kaduna and the second from Benue were recruited by the university and posted to the Federal Ministry of Works in Abuja, about 404 kilometers away. The question is raised why the minister did not request nurses to be posted from government hospitals in Abuja. The question is raised why the minister prefers female nurses and not male medical professionals.
It must also be answered whether medical personnel follow the minister everywhere he goes and if it’s part of the Federal Government protocol for all ministers or a special arrangement for Minister Umahi. It raises also the question of organizational probity. Who supervised the nurses when they were away from their Abuja office? From whom do they receive orders? Anyhow, one of the ladies, Mary Habila, was found dead, naked and bleeding from the nose and the mouth, in her guest room in the minister’s sprawling house in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, which by the minister’s account was locked from inside.
David Umahi also said the parents of the deceased and himself are very close which made it possible that she may have been given that appointment as a favour and not as merit and specially posted to the minister. Umahi has gone to great length to tell his efforts to get an autopsy for her and how her father has refused it on cultural grounds. Eyebrows were raised, especially in that part of the country where ritual killing is very rampart. Was Mary Habila’s killed for rituals? Was it from sex?
Even if the father says he is not interested in autopsy, it must be done because the nation is interested. It is no longer a matter between her father and David Umahi, it has become a matter between Mary Habila and the government. Nigerians are interested in how one of them died.
Our public officials must be held up to public and moral scrutiny. They must know they can’t do anything and get away with it. They must know Nigerians want meritocracy in appointment and that public office must not be to take advantage of any Nigerian whether they be men or women. Autopsies must be done by independent specialists and the results made public. There must also be a civil service investigation to find out the propriety of the appointment. Nigerians want to know what the ailment of David Umahi is to warrant two nurses following him everywhere and being paid out of tax payers money.
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
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