“We fear that shutting down the commission might, after all, not be in the overall public interest and may lead to underground manoeuvring to abort the impending probe.”
may suffer some snags following the abrupt demise of the agency’s Acting Executive Director, Finance and Administration, Ibanga Bassey Etang.
NDRA spokesperson, Darlington Nwauju, said the group was alarmed that after the IMC had brazenly accused the Chairmen of Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Niger Delta Affairs of corruptly inserting projects into the NDDC’s 2019 budget; and with just seven days to the expiration of the advertorials by the House of Representatives’ investigative committee calling for memoranda on the activities of NDDC, the commission was hurriedly shut down.
Concerned that every financial malfeasance threatens the hope for the development of the Niger Delta region and her people’s aspiration for a better future, Senator George Sekibo, representing Rivers East in the Senate, had moved a motion on the “Urgent need to investigate alleged financial recklessness in the NDDC, alleged wrongful sacking of management staff without recourse to established civil service rules and practice with the aim of allegedly concealing the fraudulent financial...
But, while the National Assembly might appear poised to promote accountability and foist a culture of transparency in the interventionist agency, some stakeholders in the region are of the view that the probe would also put the spotlight on lawmakers who have used their privileged positions to contribute to the pillaging of public resources through the insertion of spurious projects which are usually awarded to their proxies in the NDDC budget.
According to him, “The National Assembly members insert items we have no plans for. These items are then forced on the commission when it is not part of the master plan. Rather than be a major intervention agency, the commission is busy erecting street lights and drainages, something local governments should do.”
Pondei maintained that allegations of how N200 billion, N40 billion and N25 billion disappeared from NDDC’s coffers, which is domiciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria are spurious and unfounded. He stressed that the National Assembly does not want the Niger Delta transformed. Rather, some persons in both chambers want the NDDC to remain a place that generates monies for elections.
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