…plays the blame game on the issue

In what appears to be a tacit acceptance of his government’s failure, Senator Monday Okpebholo has admitted the collapse of the Edo Geographic Information System (Edo GIS) while attempting to deflect responsibility and shift the blame.

This comes following media reports of the Edo GIS’s total collapse. The ICT experts responsible for managing the database and the entire digitized system have pulled out of the service of Edo State due to the refusal of the Okpebholo-led state government to pay them the outstanding debts owed.

According to the report, since Okpebholo took office, he has stopped paying the ICT experts, whose debts are estimated to be over 3 billion naira. This has forced them to pull out of the service and led to the total collapse of the system.

According to the reports, all Certificates of Occupancy (C-of-Os) in the possession of residents across the State have become mere pieces of paper as there is no database against which the coordinates specified in the C-of-O can be verified.

However, in a poorly veiled defence issued by the Okpebholo administration, the government attempted to frame the collapse of the EdoGIS as part of its ongoing “rejuvenation,” thereby confirming the breakdown of a once-functional system under Okpebholo’s leadership.

In a statement, Dr. Tony Ikpasaja, Managing Director of Edo GIS, confirmed the collapse, saying, “While acknowledging the fact that Edo GIS is passing through a process of rejuvenation under Senator Monday Okpebholo, the Executive Governor of Edo state, we also want to assure the general public that there is no cause for alarm as the foreign consultants of the former administration were merely fighting a lost battle in their fool’s paradise.”

This confirms the allegation that the Okpebholo government has failed to sustain the progress made by His Excellency Godwin Obaseki in improving land titling and documentation across the state through the development of a Geographic Information System (GIS) and a digital database for land coordinates, by refusing to efficiently manage the ICT experts responsible for the Edo GIS system, leading to its collapse.

Instead, They have resorted to empty excuses to mask their failures as a government.

His Excellency Godwin Obaseki, during his term as governor, undertook the geospatial mapping of Edo State, engaging survey experts to conduct aerial surveys and produce detailed maps, which enabled the State to establish a Geographic Information System (GIS). Following this nuanced effort, Edo had one of the most advanced GIS platforms in the country, allowing for the efficient issuance of land titles. With the system, Obaseki issued over 30,000 Certificates of Occupancy (C-of-Os) in eight years, two to three times the total number issued since the state’s creation in 1991.

But that progress has now been reversed with the new development under the Senator Monday Okpebholo-led government, as the entire system has been rendered nonfunctional.