Claim: An X user claimed it’s been over ten years since they had electricity in Okitipupa, Ondo State, in the South West Region of Nigeria.
Verdict: TRUE! According to DUBAWA’s findings, the Okitipupa community has not had electricity for over ten years.
Full Text
On Feb 8, 2024, an X user @Iamgomez, posted that it’s been over ten years since they had electricity in Okitipupa, Ondo State.
The X user was reacting to a post from another X user, @Bookienotbukky, who had asked in a post what “seems like a lie but not actually a lie.”
The claim that Okitipupa lacks light has gathered 1.2 million views, 4,721 reposts, 13.9k likes, and 495 quotes.
Reacting to the claim, another user @Templecapalot, said, “It’s a lie. I went to a burial there last December. They had steady light; they actually use federal light.”
Meanwhile, another user, @Omotohwunmi1, also commented, “I was surprised when I visited last year and was told they haven’t had light for years.”
DUBAWA decided to verify the claim due to the engagement on the post and the contrasting comments about the claim.
Verification
DUBAWA contacted the Benin electricity distribution company (BEDC) in charge of Ondo State under which Okitipupa falls.
In a conversation through BEDC’s official WhatsApp phone number, testbedc, a company official who identified himself as Mikel, confirmed that there has not been electricity in Okitipupa for over ten years.
“Yes there’s an outage over there,” he said, when asked whether the outage lasted over ten years as the X user claimed.
When asked why there had been no light in the community, the official said, “Kindly visit our office in Ondo State for more information.”
However, DUBAWA further decided to speak to residents to confirm the claim.
One of the residents of Okitipupa, Oluwadara Sedara, confirmed the claim that the community last had electricity in January 2014.
“We were cut off from the National grid in January 2014. The Benin electricity distribution company management said we were owing millions of naira. All efforts to reconnect our electricity to the national grid have been proved abortive. We had embarked on many protests but it has not brought out any meaningful results. We are still grappling with our state of not having light for about a decade,” he said.
While reacting to the claim, Itiolu Emmanuel, Personal Assistant to Oba Babatunde Faduyile, the Paramount ruler of Ikale-land under whose Kingdom Okitipupa is a community, said the blackout has lasted more than a decade.
“Yes, the lack of electricity was more than ten years ago. I remember it all started in 2012- Although the blackout in other parts of the Ikale land predates that of Okitipupa, which occurred on December 29, 2012,” he said.
Also, Oba Michael Adetoye Obatuga, the Jegun of Idepe Okitipupa who is the traditional ruler of the Okitipupa community confirmed that the blackout lasted more than a decade.
“I can’t really remember the number of years, but it’s more than ten years. However, that of some other communities was more than that.
Meanwhile, DUBAWA discovered during its research that the federal government of Nigeria, through the Niger Delta Development Commission on Wednesday, May 22, 2024, inaugurated the N8.1 billion Ode-Erinje Electricity Project 132KV/33KV. The project was sub-stationed in the Okitipupa council area of Ondo State to restore electricity to the community and, by extension, Ondo South Senatorial District.
The inauguration of the project, as reported by several news media, also ignited conflicting claims about the years in which the blackout lasted.
While the Ondo State Radio Corporation news report claimed the restoration of electricity to the community through the commissioned project is taking place after 15 years, a radio station in Ondo, Positive FM of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, reported that the power was being restored after 12 years of blackout.
Following the inauguration of the power project, Hope Newspaper, an Ondo State-based newspaper, reported that light had been restored to some streets of Okitipupa.
Conclusion
According to DUBAWA’s findings, the claim about the lack of electricity in Okitipupa, Ondo State, for over ten years is true. However, there is no sufficient evidence to confirm how many years the blackouts lasted in the community.
This report was produced for DUBAWA 2024 Kwame KariKari Fellowship in partnership with The Informant247 to facilitate the ethos of “truth” in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.