Edo At The Edge: How Okpebholo Is Tearing Down Everything Obaseki Built

Edo is standing at a dangerous edge.

A state that spent eight steady years rising from disorder is now falling back into darkness.

The damage is quiet. It is deliberate. It is unfolding fast. And the people will pay the price.

What is happening today in Edo is not governance. It is destruction. It is a calculated reversal of everything that moved the state forward.

Obaseki built systems. Okpebholo is pulling them down one by one.

The worst part is that the damage is not abstract. You can feel it. You can see it. You can touch it. And if nothing changes, Edo will be dragged back to the days nobody wants to remember.

EdoGIS is a clear example.

This institution once cleaned up land acquisition in Edo. It brought order to a criminal field. Under Obaseki, over a thousand Certificates of Occupancy were issued every year. People could check land ownership digitally. Land grabbers were chased out of business.

Today, EdoGIS is a shadow of itself. The system is dead. Land acquisition is now a gamble. If you want to know who owns a land, you ask the CDA chairman or the Okaighele. That was the old Edo. The Edo everyone feared. The Edo where land was settled by force, not by law.

Okpebholo has signed fewer than 50 CofOs in a whole year. That is not leadership. That is sabotage. Even his first set of documents had inconsistent signatures. A government that cannot sign its own papers is not ready to govern.

Another tragedy is the Ossiomo power project.

This system gave steady electricity to government offices. Stable power. Cheaper power. Cleaner power. For the first time in many years, government institutions were free from the grip of BEDC and its low current.

The new government killed it.

Today, offices are running on generators again. Civil servants switch off ACs just to watch television. The same state that once enjoyed 24-hour power in key facilities is now spending millions on diesel. And who benefits? The cronies who supply diesel and generators.

The whole nation is praising Alex Otti for achieving something similar in Abia. But Edo is destroying what it already had. That is how backward we have become under Okpebholo.

Look at Stella Obasanjo Hospital.

Obaseki turned it into a modern, world-class facility. New equipment. Expanded wings. Plans for a full medical hub. Work was ongoing. Contractors were working. Health workers were proud again.

Today, the project is abandoned.

The government is hiding under the excuse that “some sections are still under construction.” Instead of funding the project to completion, they have starved it. Contractors have stopped work. Payments have not been made. A facility that could save thousands of lives is being suffocated by politics.

The same thing happened to the E-Governance system.

Edo was the first state in Nigeria to go fully digital. Every civil servant had a computer. Files moved digitally. Approvals were transparent. No missing documents. No secret deals. It was clean governance.

Okpebholo destroyed it.

Now files are piled in offices. Paper everywhere. Tissue paper is being used to draft sensitive notes. Edo has gone from digital governance to primitive administration in one year. This is not change. This is decay.

MOWAA is another victim.

This museum and cultural hub was meant to put Edo on the global cultural map. It was an economic opportunity. A tourist magnet. A prestige project. The kind of investment that lifts a state.

The new government is actively destroying it. Ignoring it. Blocking it. Frustrating it.

Why? Because it carries Obaseki’s signature. That is the only crime.

Even the car-pooling system that reduced government waste has been discontinued. The old habit of buying new cars for officials has returned. Waste is back. Carelessness is back. Ego is back.

This is not accidental. It is a pattern.

One by one, the following systems have been dismantled, abandoned, or left to rot:

• E-Governance
• Edo Health Insurance Scheme
• Digital Tax Collection
• Solomon Arase Command and Control Center
• EdoBEST
• EdoGIS
• Ossiomo Power
• MOWAA
• Stella Obasanjo Hospital expansion
• Edo Production Center
• Edo Tech Park
• Edo Innovation Hub
• JOOPSA Public Service Academy
• ESOPP
• Modular refineries
• Azura
• Cassava-to-ethanol plant
• Rubber estates
• Creative hubs
• Housing estates

The list is long. Too long for a one-year administration. No leader destroys this much by mistake.

This is not bad governance. This is deliberate wreckage.

Edo is now under a government that is proud of reversing progress. A government that is allergic to excellence. A government that prefers chaos because order exposes incompetence.

The saddest part is that ordinary Edo people will suffer. Not politicians. Not cronies. Not contractors. The people.

Children will learn less because EdoBEST is gone.

Families will pay more because health insurance is dead.

Business owners will suffer because taxes no longer go through a transparent digital route.

Land buyers will lose their savings to land grabbers.

Hospitals will remain half-finished.

Civil servants will work in darkness.

Developers will leave.

Investors will stay away.

The future will shrink.

This is the cost of political pettiness.

This is the price of electing leaders who destroy instead of build.

This is what Edo is facing today.

If Edo people remain silent, more will be destroyed. The state will sink deeper. The young will have no reason to stay. And the gains of the past eight years will become stories, not realities.

Edo is in its darkest hour.

But darkness survives only when people accept it.

Edo people must rise now. Speak now. Act now. Defend the progress that was built with sweat, discipline, and vision.

This is not about Obaseki. This is about Edo.

And Edo must not be allowed to die.