A friend of mine from Benin City recently told me about her ordeal in the hands of community development extortionist in the city. I could understand where she was coming from. All she did was purchase a completed property and decided to do little maintenance. The painter was assaulted and his equipment confiscated until my friend paid N100K to a group of touts after which the painter commenced work the following day. A different set of youths came saying that that money which was paid, was to a different division and they had not benefitted, so she had to pay another N50,000, this time she made sure that she went to the head of the street knowed natively as(Odinwere) before she could commence work on the property. This experience has really made her to reconsider increasing her investments in the town. I am well aware that this happens in most places in the south but I think that of Benin is excessive. In most other places it is mostly during building of a new property. but in Benin during the renovation of your property, installing a fence, installing a flower bed, decking etc Just putting up a structure in this city and you get harassed by youths from different segments of the community and on several occasions until the end of the project and this can be so frustrating. I know of people who have had to pay about two or three different times because they found out that they had paid this so called development fee to the wrong set of youths.

I have nothing against this fee as long it is used for the right purpose e.g. actually developing the community (filling pot holes, security e.g. neighbourhood watch, youth centre to keep youths out of trouble). Edo state needs a lot of investors but cases like these just puts investors off. At the end of the day, this money ends up in beer parlours and the purpose is defeated.

What is the Edo state Governor doing about this? I think there should be some kind of intervention, like making all those responsible accountable and have set fees, not just free for all. Even in some cases some unscrupulous people who have identified themselves as officials of BDPA have been know to extort money from innocent citizens.