The chairman of Esan West Local Government Area of Edo State, Blessing Albert Ebhodaghe, has warned commercial drivers that they risk being barred from a motor park if they wear caps or materials belonging to any party other than the ruling All Progressives Congress. The warning was captured in a video that spread on social media this week and has drawn criticism from commentators.
In the recording, Ebhodaghe is seen addressing drivers at Onitsha Park in Ekpoma, the council headquarters, before distributing APC branded caps to those present. He described the instruction as a “standing warning” issued during a tour of the park.
“On no account will I see any driver put on a cap or any material that does not belong to APC,” he said in the video. He added that any driver who breached the order could be told to leave the park, regardless of his personal relationship with him.
Ebhodaghe tied the directive to Governor Monday Okpebholo’s pledge to deliver 2.5 million votes from Edo for President Bola Tinubu in the 2027 presidential election. He told the drivers the governor’s commitment to the President could only be repaid by ensuring the promised votes materialised, and urged them to support both men, arguing that road projects under the administration had improved their transport business.
“The only thank you the governor has for the president is to deliver the 2.5 million votes,” he said in the video. “And the only payback me and you have for the governor is to make sure the promise he gave the president is fulfilled.”
The episode is not an isolated one. In October 2025, during the swearing in of commissioners in Benin City, Okpebholo directed members of his cabinet to wear caps bearing Tinubu’s “Asiwaju” insignia to State Executive Council meetings, saying he would turn back any commissioner who came without one. Days later, the Edo chapter of the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria, in a statement by its chairman Sunny Ekpeson, ordered all 18 council chairmen to make their officials wear the cap to official meetings, describing it as a way to build momentum for the 2.5 million vote target from the grassroots.
The vote pledge itself has attracted scrutiny on arithmetic grounds. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission, Edo had about 2.5 million registered voters at the 2023 general election, which means the figure the governor has repeatedly cited is close to the entire register rather than actual turnout. Turnout in the state has historically been far lower. At the 2024 governorship election, Okpebholo was declared winner with 291,667 votes, ahead of the Peoples Democratic Party’s Asue Ighodalo on 247,274, on a total that fell well short of the register.
The context also sits awkwardly with Edo’s recent voting pattern. At the 2023 presidential election, the Labour Party’s Peter Obi carried the state, and in the Esan Central, Esan West and Igueben federal constituency that covers the council in question, Obi polled about 62 per cent against roughly 18 per cent for Tinubu, according to INEC’s constituency returns. Delivering 2.5 million votes for the President from that base would represent a dramatic reversal.
There are legal questions around directives of this kind. Commercial drivers are private citizens, and conditioning access to a public motor park on the display of one party’s materials raises issues of coercion and freedom of political association, which is protected under Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution. Local government officials are also expected to administer public facilities without partisan discrimination. As of the time of writing, neither the Edo State Government nor the APC had issued a formal response to the video, and it was not clear whether any driver had in fact been removed from the park.
The pattern of public appeals for a single bloc of votes has become a feature of Edo politics since Okpebholo took office. He has restated the 2.5 million vote pledge at several party gatherings, including a South South APC stakeholders’ meeting in Benin City where he and other leaders endorsed Tinubu for a second term, citing road construction and federal programmes such as the student loan scheme.
What remains uncertain is whether the council’s directive will be enforced, challenged, or quietly dropped. Video evidence of a serving local government chairman distributing party caps and threatening livelihoods over political dress is likely to feature in the wider debate about the neutrality of public office ahead of 2027, but no official sanction or clarification had followed at press time.