By Crusoe Osagie
After an election many believed to be a heist organised by the very institutions responsible for the defense of the people’s choice, Monday Okpebholo came into office on the 12th of November, 2024 with a hefty baggage of credibility crisis.
Quite frankly, his first 100 days in office have upended the chaos that accompanied the charade of an election that brought the taciturn and diminutive Senator into office.
From his very first decision to sack nearly 5000 civil servants whose only crime was entering the public service in the previous administration, to the perpetual bullying of elected local government council officials, Okpebholo has been the proverbial bull in the China shop, smashing everything and leaving chaos in his wake.
Apart from a handful of politicians and Okpebholo’s gang of enforcers, over 4 million Edo residents walk on egg shells, like a conquered people whose hope now hangs precariously on the verdict of the election petition tribunal, forced to relocate to Abuja because Okpebholo as the Chief Security Officer of the State could not guarantee the safety of the judges, lawyers and witnesses.
Early days of high drama, no impact
Edo people’s embarrassment began with his ignoble worldwide notoriety during his first major outing to present the 2025 budget at the Edo State House of Assembly, making our State the subject of global ridicule as he chuckled miserably trying to pronounce the figures of his own budget.
Beyond hiding behind jaundiced pressers and media hacks to mask his incompetence and unpreparedness for office, Okpebholo has nothing to show for his first 100 days but hollow promises and a litany of white elephant projects designed to siphon public funds to settle political debts and reward his thug of enforcers for their roles in the heist of an election that brought him into office.
From hopping from one project of his predecessor to another to pose for selfies and photo ops, to commissioning a boutique owned by a known thug as a government legacy project, to chasing after his white elephant projects like the laughable aircraft assembling and the water fountain projects in Benin, his reign as governor has been the worst 100 days for Edo people.
Under his watch, Edo State has been running in circles with no tangible governance or leadership impact. The State has, instead, witnessed successive failures and retrogression on multiple fronts, from the health sector to education, technology, economy, security, agriculture, and human capacity development, amongst others.
Attack on Local Councils
Impunity, financial recklessness, and blatant disregard for the rule of law and due process are other defining hallmarks that have distinguished Okpebholo’s first 100 days in office. The brazen attack on local government councils and ongoing extermination of constitutional democracy at the grassroots are classical examples of this.
With his supervision, duly elected local government chairmen and vice chairmen were, like common criminals, humiliated out of office by thugs and other non-state actors using horse whips and dangerous weapons.
This was despite the ruling of every court in the land, from the Chief Judge of Edo State to the Supreme Court, and an Edo State High Court, as well as the advisory of the President through the Attorney General of the Federation, against Okpebholo’s failed illegal suspension of the local council executives through the State Assembly.
Okpebholo, as though in a banana republic, handpicked passersby from various streets across the State and brought them into the council legislative buildings to stage a kangaroo impeachment of the elected council executives. In other councils where this failed, one or sometimes two councilors were financially induced to orchestrate the lawless impeachments. Reports and video evidence of this charade are replete in the media.
Meanwhile, he continues to exercise unconstitutional control over the local government councils, seizing their allocations and hindering the due payment of salaries for local government staff, including primary school teachers, pensioners, and primary healthcare officers across the state.
Simply put, it has been chaos, crisis, and brigandage in Edo local government councils since Okpebholo assumed office on November 12, 2024.
Edo, Nigeria’s new gangland
If Okpebholo has achieved anything in his first 100 days in office, it is the mindless way in which he has empowered thugs and non-state actors to intimidate and harass his own people. To his credit, Edo State has, today, become a gangland of sorts.
The lives of transportation employees and employers have been turned into a living hell by thugs and hoodlums who harass, intimidate, and demand unlawful levies under the veiled protection of the Okpebholo administration, leading to daily protests and significant loss of man-hours.
Similarly, market women are in disarray following the illegal imposition of a new market leader (Iyeki), who is working hand-in-glove with the Okpebholo administration to deploy thugs for extortion, harassment, and intimidation across Edo markets. This has led to many of their businesses shutting down, with the women continuously protesting and rioting in frustration.
It is the activities of these thugs empowered by Okpebholo that led to the relocation of the Edo Governorship Petition Tribunal to Abuja, as they stormed the court premises on a daily basis, shooting sporadically, causing chaos and disrupting public order while harassing lawyers, judges, and others at the tribunal.
Within the short period he has held sway, Edo State has witnessed an uptick in violence and criminal activities, too numerous to list, linked to these different gangs of thugs who are said to be under the protection of the state government.
Today, a well-known thug, Tony Kabaka Adun, has been appointed by Okpebholo as the Enforcement Consultant to the Edo State Board of Internal Revenue (BIR). He is expected to work alongside Kelly Okungbowa, also known as Capacity Ebo Stone, another notorious thug who serves as the Coordinator of the Edo State Public Response Safety (PRS), the infantry arm of the Okpebholo government, to drive revenue collection while harassing, brutalizing, and maiming the Edo people, whom Okpebholo should be protecting.
Fear is now a constant companion for many Edo residents, who now live with the daily anxiety of becoming the next victims of the relentless intimidation, attacks, or brutality by thugs and non-state actors employed by the Okpebholo government. One can only imagine what to expect in the coming days.
Onslaught on businesses, private sector
Okpebholo, the bull in Edo’s China shop, has continued his unprecedented onslaught on the private sector and businesses in the State, despite the critical role they play in driving its economic growth and development.
Defying all logic, Okpebholo launched an aggressive attack on blue-chip companies such as Presco and Okomu Plc, which are today the two largest investors and employers of labour in the State.
Additionally, the Edo State Oil Palm Programme (ESOPP), which has reputed Edo as the largest area of land under oil palm cultivation in Africa and transformed the State’s oil palm industry into a multi-billion-dollar sector, creating jobs, supporting host communities, and generating substantial revenue for the government, is also being sabotaged, with the devious ploy to cripple it.
The Museum of West African Art (MOWAA), the Radisson Hotel Project, and the Benin City Mall, are all in the firing line of Okpebholo’s ongoing onslaught on private investments in the State.
One is forced to wonder why a governor, who is supposed to superintend the progress, advancement, and economic transformation of a state and its people, is instead the same person driving its regression, if not for the fact that he is a politician entirely out of his depth.
Okpebholo’s govt of splurge, corruption
Plainly put, Okpebholo has run the most corrupt government ever known under Nigeria’s democracy. In less than 80 days, two of the government’s most senior officials, including the chief law officer, the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Samson Osagie and the Chairman of the Local Government Service Commission, Mr. Damian Lawani, were suspended for financial infractions.
We have it on good authority that after every EXCO meeting, which happens once a week, each attendee is handed a whooping allowance of one million naira, which means if they have four EXCO meetings for a month, every council member would have pocketed four million naira for that month.
In his first week in office, Okpebholo allegedly lavished over N5bn from the State’s coffers to acquire a new fleet of ultra-modern armoured SUVs, while gifting the new armoured SUVs which were procured for his government by Governor Obaseki, to the Acting Chairman of the State’s chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Jarret Tenebe.
This is in addition to the ₦9.6 billion expended on the procurement of 60 new Toyota Prado SUVs for government officials and politicians in the State at the cost of N160 million each. Hence, the government in less than three months, spent over N20bn to acquire luxury vehicles for politicians while economic hardship bites.
We also uncovered that Okpebholo recently withdrew N2.5 billion from the State’s treasury for personal use, under the pretense of paying compensation for land acquired along Sapele Road by the Edo State Government for overriding public interest during the previous administration.
How much more corrupt and reckless can a government be with the people’s resources?
Education, health sectors in comatose
In the last 100 days that Okpebholo sat as Edo’s helmsman, education has taken a notorious back seat, ranking least on the list of States with top priority and budgetary allocations for the sector. As with other sectors, Okpebholo is clueless and has no plans or articulate policy programmes to improve or sustain existential reforms by the immediate past government of Godwin Obaseki which had put the State on the global map for good.
To celebrate his 100 days in office, Okpebholo has penciled over 100 schools and other projects of his predecessor, His Excellency Godwin Obaseki for commissioning, attempting to claim these projects as though they were his own. But in reality, he has done nothing of his own, except hopping from one project of his predecessor to another to create an illusion of achievement.
The healthcare sector is not spared of his vacuity and clueless governance system. Over 500,000 Edo residents, including pensioners, civil servants, and market women, among others who are beneficiaries of the Edo Health Insurance Scheme (EdoHIS) have been dislodged from the service as hospitals continue to withdraw their services due to Okpebholo’s refusal to remit the period premium to pay service providers and keep the programme functioning.
The setback has reversed the significant progress made in healthcare delivery under the previous administration, leaving Edo residents, particularly the vulnerable, without a lifeline.
Doctors in the State under the aegis of the Medical and Dental Consultants of Nigeria (MDCAN) had to also go on strike over the imposition of an unqualified Jarret Tenebe’s brother, Nelson as Chief Executive of the State Hospital Management Agency.
The strike among other things revealed that Okpebholo is a lame-duck chief executive as his orders for the removal of Nelson Tenebe and the reinstatement of Dr. Christopher Eigbe Ehiagwin were flagrantly disregarded by the puppeteers and power brokers, who are the ones calling the shots in the government.
Without mincing words, Okpebholo’s first 100 days have been uninspiring, detached from the people, and marked by regression across all sectors.
String of failures
There was an attempt to reverse the Edo e-governance system, after indiscriminately dismissing the senior civil servants responsible for the smooth running of the digital platform, leaving Okpebholo and his government severely hamstrung.
Attempt to reverse the revenue collection processes set up by Obaseki had to be hurriedly jettisoned when the monthly revenue took a massive nosedive in November from over N8 billion to less than N2 billion.
Interestingly, all the roads and other projects flaunted by Okpebholo and his handlers in the last 100 days are Obaseki’s projects, with others being ongoing Federal Government projects. These include the Temboga Road, initiated and completed by the Obaseki-led administration, as well as the Ekenhuan Road. The Benin-Auchi Road and the ongoing repairs of the Benin-Abuja Road are those of the Federal Government, being falsely touted as Okpebholo’s achievements.
The Education Hub at Iyaro, the School of Health, the School of Agriculture, and the School of Nursing Sciences, all legacy projects of the Obaseki administration, are on the long list of projects now being falsely showcased by Okpebholo as his own achievements.
The only project that Okpebholo initiated, without any procurement process being carried out, is the white elephant flyover bridge in Ramat Park, which expectedly has not seen the light of day.
The state-owned newspaper, The Nigerian Observer, which was upgraded by the Obaseki government to meet global standards, has now been run aground. Upon assuming office, Okpebholo sacked all workers at the media house.
The printing facility, one of the best in Africa, has become nonfunctional, and the online version of the newspaper that ran for 24 hours has gone offline. The last updates on the website date back to December 2024, highlighting the extent of regression in Edo State over the past 100 days. Okpebholo’s failures have been successive, with each one more disastrous than the last.
To put it mildly, the last 100 days in Edo State have been a lost cause, marked by torturous tales of chaos, lawlessness, illegality, and regression across all sectors. The people of Edo are eagerly awaiting the judiciary to correct the injustice of September 21, 2024, and return the stolen mandate to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Asue Ighodalo, whom they overwhelmingly voted for in the last governorship election. Only then can they hope for an end to this excruciating chapter authored by the shallow politician called Okpebholo.
Crusoe Osagie,
Media Adviser to His Excellency, Mr. Godwin Obaseki,
Governor, Edo State (2016-2024)
