One Year in Office: Okpebholo The ‘Panel Beater’ Has Put Badly Accidented Edo Vehicle Back on The Road Again – Afegbua

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As the Governor Monday Okpebholo administration counts down to its first year in office November 12, 2025, the state government has rolled out activities for the celebration, notably commissioning of projects in various sectors that would showcase how the “badly accidented Edo vehicle” it inherited “has bounced back to the road again”.

Prince Kassim Afegbua, the commissioner for information and strategy, at a press conference on Monday, said “If we pretend that we didn’t inherit rots and decay in infrastructure, we will not be doing justice to our historical antecedent”, noting that “Where we are coming from, the trajectory of governance is one that we thought Edo was already an El Dorado as captured by the vuvuzelas of the previous administration, very active social media population who have been defending inanities of the past”.

Afegbua expressed satisfaction that a governor whom they denigrated and literally thought he had no basis to contest election, has lived up to the contemptuous name, ‘panel beater’, that he was called, “Unknown to them, panel-beaters are fixers of accidented vehicles”, and is presently panel-beating Edo State vehicle to move again.

According to him, “When you have a vehicle that is badly accidented, all the headlights are off.  You only require a solid panel-beater to be able to fix such a vehicle. And I can tell you without any fear or favour, that the Edo Accidental Vehicle is being gradually fixed by Governor Okpebholo. And the vehicle has bounced back to the road again.

“We are not pretending that in fixing that accidental vehicle, we have to step on toes. Toes in the area of cultism, toes in the area of kidnappers or kidnapping, toes in the area of those who plunder the resources of this state in a very wanton manner; toes against those who decided to detain the growth and development of Edo State. And we will not relent”.

 He said though it had not been rosy, “but we thank God we have brought the vehicle from the mechanical shop, now on the road. We are test-driving it. And before you can bring the vehicle to test-drive, having been heavily accidented, you know that a lot of work has gone into it”.

Reeling out the achievements of Governor Okpebholo in about one year, the commissioner said the Ramat fly over, which is designed to ameliorate the very terrible traffic situation at Ikpoba-Slope axis has started while another one at Dawson Road in Benin has also started. He said a third one that would come in the life of the administration is being planned.

On road infrastructure, Afegbua said the Sapele Road is being recovered as we speak, noting that the governor had brought in the Federal Minister of Works and Housing, David Umahi more than three times to the precarious situation of Edo roads.

“The Governor made the Auchi road passable from Benin to Ekpoma, from Ekpoma to Ewu down to Agbede; they are being attended to as we speak and the bad portion of the Ekpoma road is also being given very serious attention, the commissioner said.

In the education sector, the government said it had recovered a lot of schools. Expressing disappointment at what it met on ground, the government said “we thought the challenge in the education sector will not be much, but we were wrong.

“When we came on board and we were hearing something like EdoBEST, we thought our schools have been properly fixed and that the EdoBEST initiative was what we needed to ensure full compliance with contemporary requirements for education of our people. But we were wrong.

“EdoBEST was a conduit pipe by the previous government to defraud the state. They were paying N160 million every month to their consultants from 2018 up to the time that the government exited power in 2024”.

He noted that apart from the deliberate intervention of the Oshiomhole administration in the name of ‘Red Roof Revolution’, “we haven’t seen any tangible intervention in terms of reclaiming the schools in Edo State. Right inside Benin here, there are schools without windows, schools without chairs and tables, schools without teachers.

“Thank God that the Governor has commenced reclaiming those schools, one of which is the Army Day Secondary school which he built within eight weeks when they went on holiday.

“He bought chairs and tables and rebranded the entire school, fenced the entire compound to assume almost a brand-new structure.

“We are happy that across the entire state, we have about 60 to 63 schools receiving attention as part of the first phase intervention. About more than half of that have been completed, part of which we will be commissioning”.

Noting that the population of teachers had been abysmally low, he said “We have integrated 5,000 teachers into the Edo civil service”.

Talking about the Edo State civil service, the commissioner said 500 civil servants were similarly integrated to fill up vacant positions and re-energize, overhaul and re-tool it.

According to him, but for this administration, “Edo Civil Service would have been a joke of the century” because the previous government abandoned it “and expended so much resources on the use of consultants. In the process, 41 agencies were established, most of which were conduit pipes to fleece the resources of the state. We thank God that we have come very strongly to inject new blood into that system”.

In the health sector, Afegbua stated that about 60 primary health care centres have recovered and have also been put to good use while general hospitals that were in shambles before now are receiving serious attention and being repackaged.

In Agriculture, the government said it is waiting for investors to come on board, while it has embarked on a pilot project of planting maize in 400 acres of land which is ready for harvest. He said the maize that would be harvested will be sold and some would be kept in silos “for the benefit of those end-users who are around to buy them off producers”.

Afegbua said the Ecological Commission which the government had just set up had gone round the state to look at those terrible gully erosion areas “and they’re taking judicious note of those places with a view to intervening in those areas”.

In the area of security which had been a major challenge before he came into office, Afegbua said “We are proud to say that when the government of Okpebholo came on stream, the first thing he did was to buy over 60 Hilux buses to assist the police, civil defence including the military for their mobility and logistics to combat crime and criminalities. We are happy that our intervention in that aspect is yielding fruits”.

He said though “We have not gotten to the climax of that; we can boldly say that we have impacted so positively in the area of security”.

 Other interventions included the delivery of 400 motorcycles to the police, civil defence and the DSS to help mobility to places that are very rural and not easily accessible by vehicles especially when urgent movement is required. He said with this, “we have seen how the military, police and civil defence have reached out to kidnap victims without too much time wasted in the process.

For effective coordination, the governor has also created a Ministry of Public Security and Safety led by a former deputy speaker, who would be interfacing with security agencies for timely solutions to issues as they come up, while some commands have been established in Edo North, and Edo Central, around Uromi area.

“We have pleaded with the military; they have assisted with some soldiers. Only last week, 100 policemen were deployed to Okpella as a way to combat any kidnapping in that area”. Military and police posts have also been opened at Okpella where kidnap of workers in the companies there had been prevalent.

And for effective coverage of the state, Afegbua said 2,500 men and women were recruited into the Edo security corps and trained by soldiers, and they have since been deployed to different local government areas.

“That means essentially, we have men who will assist in collaborating with the police in information gathering and also deepening community policing”.  He said government may not have provided answers to all the crises, “but we have a very strong political will to take actions, particularly on the issue of cultism.

“And each time we discover houses where victims were kept and ransoms were collected, we prosecute those people and obtain court warrants or court verdicts to pull down the houses.

“There is a law in place which has been tinkered with by the government to make it more active. The cultism and anti-kidnapping law pronounces death sentence for anyone caught and convicted with respect to these two deadly anti-social vices”.

Afegbua said the one-year anniversary would be marked with media tour of projects beginning from November 7 to 11, 2025 so that journalist would visibly see what is on ground “and not projects that are captured in MoU for which we can’t find their location”.