OKPEBHOLO’S DARK CHRISTMAS IN EDO

OKPEBHOLO’S DARK CHRISTMAS IN EDO

By Daniel A. Noah Osa-Ogbegie, Esq.

Christmas is traditionally a season of light, warmth, renewal, and collective hope. In Edo State, particularly in Benin City, this Christmas has arrived cloaked in darkness, both physical and moral. Streets that should glow with festive brilliance are subdued. Public buildings that ought to symbolise order and functionality stand in oppressive gloom. Offices that once worked seamlessly now stagger through the day in fits of darkness and silence. This is not an accident of fate. It is the direct outcome of governance driven by insecurity, bitterness, and a destructive obsession with undoing the legacy of a predecessor rather than advancing the welfare of the people.

Governor Monday Okpebholo has, in a remarkably short time, demonstrated how fragile progress can be when leadership is animated by petty politics instead of policy intelligence. Nowhere is this failure more stark, more unforgivable, than in his ill-considered attack on, and eventual withdrawal from, the power supply arrangement with Ossiomo Power.

That arrangement was not cosmetic. It was not experimental. It was a deliberate, forward-looking policy under the Obaseki administration to provide stable, embedded electricity to Edo State Government buildings in Benin City. At a time when the national grid has become synonymous with collapse, instability, and national embarrassment, Edo chose innovation over excuses. Independent power supply reduced downtime, cut long-term costs, improved efficiency, and restored dignity to public service.

Across Nigeria, enlightened sub-national governments are aggressively pursuing embedded power solutions because the facts are undeniable. The national grid has collapsed repeatedly in recent years. Distribution companies are overstretched. Power generation remains unreliable. Edo State was not lagging behind these realities. Edo was ahead of them.

Yet, Governor Okpebholo chose to dismantle this functional arrangement. Not because it failed. Not because it was financially unsustainable. Not because it was unlawful. But because of an unreasoned paranoia that perceives every successful initiative of his predecessor as a political threat rather than a public asset.

The consequences are now visible, measurable, and deeply humiliating.

The fallout of Okpebholo’s assault on Ossiomo Power is that enormous pressure has now been transferred to the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC), a utility already burdened by lean capacity, legacy infrastructure challenges, and systemic national constraints. What was previously a shared load has become an unbearable strain.

In my residential neighbourhood and office areas, where we previously enjoyed an average of about sixteen hours of electricity daily, supply has now plummeted to roughly two hours, on good days. In my office axis, there are stretches of three days or more without power. Darkness has become routine. Generators now roar where productivity once flowed quietly. Diesel expenses mount. Businesses struggle. Households adjust downward. This is regression in real time.

The state secretariat itself has become a tragic metaphor for governance under Okpebholo. Only recently, I was present when electricity was restored after more than a week of blackout. What followed was both surreal and sobering. Civil servants burst into spontaneous thunderous celebration. Cheers echoed through corridors. Applause broke out. Laughter rang loud.

Electricity, once taken for granted under Obaseki, had been reduced to a spectacle, a rare event worthy of jubilation. That moment captured the moral collapse of governance in Edo today. When civil servants celebrate power supply as a miracle, the state has fallen far below acceptable standards.

Under the Obaseki administration, stable electricity in government offices was normalised. No one applauded it because competence had made it ordinary. Today, under Okpebholo, darkness has been normalised, and light has become exceptional.

Electricity is not cosmetic infrastructure. It is foundational. It underpins productivity, transparency, service delivery, and economic confidence. Persistent darkness increases operational costs, fuels inefficiency, deepens corruption, and crushes morale. Every hour of blackout translates into lost man-hours, delayed files, frustrated citizens, and avoidable spending on diesel and generator maintenance.

This collapse is occurring at a time when Edo State and its local governments receive substantial monthly allocations running into several billions of naira. Edo people are therefore entitled to ask, without apology: what exactly is governance under Okpebholo prioritising, if not the basic functionality of the state?

Christmas in Edo should have been marked by continuity of progress, not a ritual dismantling of it. Instead, the state is trapped in a politics of resentment. Projects are abandoned not on merit but on lineage. Policies are discarded not on evidence but on origin. Governance has been reduced to a theatre of erasure.

Darkness, however, cannot be spun. Gloom cannot be rebranded. The lived experience of Edo people speaks louder than official denials and choreographed propaganda. Investors notice. Businesses notice. Workers notice. Ordinary citizens notice.

If this trajectory persists, the outlook is grim. A state sliding into administrative inertia. A capital city losing its vitality, literally and symbolically. A workforce conditioned to celebrate crumbs. A people slowly being taught to accept decline as normal.

Leadership is not measured by how viciously one disowns a predecessor, but by how wisely one preserves what works and improves what does not. Edo State does not belong to Obaseki. It does not belong to Okpebholo. It belongs to its people, living and dead. Functional policies must transcend personal grudges.

This Christmas, Edo is darker than it has ever been at any time in history. Yet darkness, no matter how entrenched, is never permanent. It yields to courage, humility, and governance anchored on reason rather than resentment. The sooner this administration understands that truth, the sooner light will return to Edo State, not merely to its buildings, but to its battered sense of direction and hope.

DAN Osa-Ogbegie , a private legal practitioner based in Benin City , is publicity Secretary , Edo PDP