By Saintmoses Eromosele (SME)
Chris Osa Nehikhare’s critique of Edo’s 2025 Agricultural Budget reeks of selective amnesia and misplaced moral confidence. It is easy to sermonize about “agro-industrialization” and “value-chain integration” when your own tenure as Commissioner for Information supervised the loudest silence of wasted billions.
Let’s be clear: the Sobe Farms debacle under the Obaseki administration was not just a failed multibillion naira project — it became a metaphor for deceit. A once-promising state farm transformed into a kidnapper’s den after public funds were poured into the dust more to settle political scores than to feed and empower Edo people. The so-called apostles of agri-innovation left Edo with no harvest, no processing plant, and no coherent agricultural legacy.
So when the same architects of failure sneer at corn harvests, they betray the arrogance of a class that confuses PowerPoint agriculture with real farming. Corn is not just a crop — it’s food. It’s life. It’s the beginning of agro-industrialization, not the absence of it. What is the point of all the “big talk” if people cannot eat? What is the value of “smart agriculture” that doesn’t produce even a single bag of grain?
Governor Monday Okpebholo is not playing politics with hunger. He understands that agriculture begins with cultivation, not conferences. His approach — simple, visible, and people-focused — is what Edo needs now. Real seeds in real soil, not slides in air-conditioned boardrooms. Corn today means maize flour tomorrow, feed for poultry, starch for industries, and export potential when scaled through local processing hubs like those envisioned in Ewu and across Esanland.
Budgetary numbers mean nothing without moral honesty. Under Obaseki, billions disappeared without accountability. Under Okpebholo, even small beginnings are producing visible food security results. One harvest of corn — planted, grown, and eaten by Edo people — is worth more than a thousand empty slogans about “agro corridors” that never existed.
Chris Nehikhare and his colleagues should be in repentance mode, not lecture mode. Their past record disqualifies them from moral high ground. The future belongs to doers, not deceivers.
In Edo today, corn is not a symbol of backwardness — it’s a symbol of rebirth. And Governor Okpebholo, unlike his verbose predecessors, is showing that transformation starts from the ground up.
— Saintmoses Eromosele (SME) writes from his Cassava farm in Ewu ✍🏾
