A lot of us may be familiar with the popular primary school break time rhyme ‘some have food but cannot eat…’. At that age, we may not have been able to exactly understand what the phrase meant, but a perfect example today is the case of the Ihovbor community. A typical to-have-food-and-not-eat situation.
Ihovbor, which is a community in the Uhunmwonde local government area of Edo state is home to one of Nigeria’s generation plants, the Ihovbor 450MW gas turbine power plant. The federal government in 2005, initiated the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPPs) to attend to the issue of inadequate electricity supply in the country. The Ihovbor plant was one of these projects.
With a unit of the project being completed in January 2018, one would expect to hear nothing but tales of good news and an abundance of electricity supply, if not from anyone else, at least from the indigenes of the community. However, that is not the case.
In fact, it has been the complete opposite. In November 2018, members of the community complained about not having electricity for almost two years. This lack of electricity supply has affected the community’s daily routine gravely. Food could not be preserved, and small businesses in the community could hardly be sustained.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=waRPigwqVT8
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_xXSHCiB0BU&t=164s
Also, in 2019, the indigenes of Ihovbor took to the streets to protest. They had not gotten electricity for over two years. This was particularly painful because the community was the source of electricity distributed to other areas. Members of the community complained of the pollution the plant had caused in their water and farms, the noise from the turbines, and some even considered selling their houses to go live in other parts of the state.
The most recent protest from the people of Ihovbor happened in December 2020, when they refused to let the staff of the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) go to work. This action put some parts of the state in total darkness throughout the Christmas celebrations. They only agreed to stay down when they were visited by the state governor, who made plans to try and restore electricity to the community.
With Ihovbor as a case study, agreements should not just be made, but also followed through to ensure that the host communities of generation plant projects are amongst the first listed beneficiaries in both jobs and electricity supply. As such, there would be fewer absurd cases of ‘having food and not being able to eat it’.