Opinion: President Buhari: You Must Act More Decisively to Salvage NDDC, By Ogaga Ifowodo
Given the magnitude of the problems currently besetting NDDC, such that the actual work of developing the Niger Delta has practically ceased, only the president can break the impasse. If he wishes to make friends in the creeks now and beyond 2023, I would suggest the following as urgent steps that he must take. First, he should ensure that the forensic audit he has ordered is done by a reputable international accounting firm.
Despite the many structural, administrative and political interference problems noticeable at once, I threw myself at the job with gusto. I inspected minor and major projects but devoted most of my time to the latter. And discovered that many of the projects described as “ongoing” in the status report I got from the Delta office had virtually been abandoned. Among them: Uzere-Patani Road with bridges, awarded on December 10, 2004 at the cost of N3.
Of the many ills that bedevil NDDC, the frequent dissolution of its boards ranks among the most deleterious. All the powers of NDDC are vested in the board. Consequently, precipitate board dissolutions can only cause catastrophic lack of continuity in policy and internal oversight. In time, crippling bureaucracy replaced technocracy.
Given the magnitude of the problems currently besetting NDDC, such that the actual work of developing the Niger Delta has practically ceased, only the president can break the impasse. If he wishes to make friends in the creeks now and beyond 2023, I would suggest the following as urgent steps that he must take. First, he should ensure that the forensic audit he has ordered is done by a reputable international accounting firm.
Third, the President should ensure a restructuring of NDDC’s bloated balance sheet, estimated at over N2 trillion. As a first step to this goal, our board cancelled a tranche of projects at zero per cent completion, thereby reducing the balance sheet by N200 billion.
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