NDDC AUDIT AND THE WAY FORWARD

Government should inaugurate the board while implementing the audit report

After months of rigmarole, the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio recently submitted the much-touted ‘Forensic audit’ of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to the federal government. Although full details are still shrouded in secrecy, the audit reportedly covered a total of 13,777 contracts. The sum of N6 trillion also accrued to the commission through statutory allocations between 2001 and 2019 which the audit covered. While receiving the audit report from Akpabio, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, expressed dismay that the commission maintained an unprecedented 362 bank accounts as conduit pipes through which the NDDC funds were used to pay contractors for either unexecuted or abandoned projects.

On 17th October 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari had ordered the forensic scrutiny of NDDC while playing host to nine governors of the constituent states of the interventionist agency. This followed the misgivings expressed by the governors that the agency’s operations were characterised by poor choice of projects, shoddy handling of jobs and lack of the required support for the efforts of the states and local government administrations in the region. The sum of N2.5 billion was reportedly earmarked for the forensic audit. The federal government also provided a total of 33 utility vehicles to aid the auditors discharge their duties while the exercise lasted. Despite this huge investment, we do not believe that the audit report will come up with anything new, assuming the authorities will release it to the public.

In October 2020, there were media reports of monumental corruption manifesting in extensive contract frauds, procurement law infractions, non-budgetary and extra-budgetary spending, audit violations, cronyism, fiscal recklessness. There was also flagrant disregard to procedural rules as well as other financial malpractices levelled against the management of NDDC. Many parliamentarians were fingered in the show of shame that occurred during a public hearing in the National Assembly. They were all pointers to the fact that the plunder in the NDDC cuts across players from the executive and legislative arms as well as individuals at all levels, including the minders of the agency.

But the revelations came as no surprise to stakeholders. Rather than promoting the region’s development agenda in line with its mandate, the NDDC has become a cesspool of corruption for which many of its past and present leaders as well as top government functionaries have not only been complicit but had been indicted. There is therefore an urgent need to inaugurate the already appointed board of the agency while the federal government moves to implement the audit report. The existing Interim Management Committee (IMC) has no place in law.

Now that the audit report had been submitted without the inauguration of a board to run the NDDC as stipulated by the enabling law, many stakeholders believe the whole idea of a ‘forensic audit’ was contrived. The act establishing the commission leaves no room for a situation that empowers a few people who report to the Niger Delta minister to practically run it as sole administrators. If we must entrench a culture of transparency and accountability in the affairs of the commission, it is important to have a substantive board in place.

Besides, operating outside the law to impose an interim board with elastic mandate cannot be a way to instill accountability in NDDC. If care is not taken, the agency could go the way of the Niger Delta Development Board (NDDB), created in 1958 and the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC), in 1992. The president must rectify this situation by constituting the NDDC board without any further delay.