The Deputy Governor’s celebrated BEDC partnership is, at best, a cosmetic gesture on a festering wound. Delta State’s power crisis demands bold, structural action, not ceremonial meetings.
By Ambassador Chuks Ododo
The announcement by the Deputy Governor of Delta State, Sir Monday Onyeme, celebrating a partnership with BEDC Electricity Plc to ‘fast-track power restoration’ in Ndokwa Nation and surrounding communities has been met with deep scepticism and justifiable anger by residents who have endured decades of darkness. With respect to the Deputy Governor, there is nothing to celebrate.
BEDC – the Benin Electricity Distribution Company needs no introduction to Deltans. Its track record is well-documented and, frankly, damning: epileptic power supply measured in hours per week, estimated billing that charges customers for electricity they never receive, disconnections without notice, and a persistent indifference to the plight of the communities it is mandated to serve. To now present a stakeholders’ meeting with this same company as a breakthrough is to insult the intelligence of the very people the government exists to serve.
THE NDOKWA PEOPLE HAVE SUFFERED LONG ENOUGH
The residents of Ndokwa Nation have not been passive. They have taken to the streets both within Delta State and in the Federal Capital, Abuja, to demand electricity that other Nigerians take for granted. These are not radical demands. As the Deputy Governor himself acknowledged at the meeting, the people are not asking for 24-hour power. They are asking for something. Anything. That such a modest aspiration requires peaceful demonstrations in a state that sits atop a wealth of natural resources is both scandalous and heartbreaking.
Isoko, Kwale, Ndokwa these communities have watched their businesses collapse, their children study by candlelight, their hospitals run on fumes, and their economic potential wither, while government officials hold meetings and issue press releases. Meetings do not power factories. Communiqués do not refrigerate medicine. Press conferences do not run boreholes. Electricity does.
OTHER STATES ARE ACTING — DELTA IS MEETING
The contrast with peer states is stark and instructive. Abia State, Enugu State, and Lagos State have not waited for BEDC or its sister distribution companies to reform themselves. They have moved decisively to engage Independent Power Producers (IPPs), alternative providers who generate and distribute electricity directly to communities, bypassing the chronically underperforming national grid framework. The results speak for themselves: businesses are returning, investments are flowing, and citizens are sleeping with their lights on.
Delta State, by contrast, continues to place its faith in BEDC a company that has had decades and multiple regulatory interventions to improve, and has consistently failed to do so. The Distribution Sector Recovery Programme (DISREP) metering initiative announced at the stakeholders’ meeting may be welcome in principle, but meters without power are monuments to bureaucratic futility. You cannot meter electricity that does not flow.
A MESSAGE TO THE DEPUTY GOVERNOR
We address Sir Monday Onyeme directly, not with hostility, but with urgency. You have the platform, the political capital, and we believe the genuine desire to improve the lives of your people. The question is whether that desire will translate into bold action or an incremental gesture.
We urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to use your office to facilitate the step-down of Independent Power Plants (IPPs) in Ndokwa and across Delta State. There are viable, existing IPP frameworks that can bring reliable electricity to our communities without dependency on a grid and a distribution company that have both failed us. Champion this cause. Fight for it in the Executive Council. Make it your legacy.
Road construction is important, and bridges connect communities. But electricity has a direct, immediate, and measurable impact on human life that no infrastructure project can replicate. Power keeps children in school at night. Power keeps small businesses alive. Power determines whether a family eats a hot meal or a cold one. Power saves lives in clinics that cannot afford to run generators around the clock. You cannot overstate the importance of electricity to human dignity.
OUR DEMANDS ARE SIMPLE AND REASONABLE
We therefore call on the Delta State Government to: immediately commission a feasibility study for IPP step-down in Ndokwa, Isoko, and other chronically underserved communities; engage established independent power providers who have demonstrated capacity in comparable states; set clear, time-bound benchmarks for power restoration and publish them; stop celebrating process as if it were progress; and hold BEDC contractually accountable or explore lawful franchise alternatives.
We also call on the Delta State Commissioner for Energy, Engr. Michael Anoka, to escalate this matter beyond stakeholder meetings and into concrete policy action. Delta State is, as he correctly noted, a major shareholder in BEDC. Shareholders have the right and obligation to demand performance or effect change.
The people of Ndokwa Nation and Delta State at large are patient; they have demonstrated this patience for far too long. But patience is not passivity, and goodwill is not without limit. Let this be the last meeting. Let the next announcement be the flipping of a switch that actually stays on.
