NDDC Ensuring Transparency in Discharge of Mandate, Says Akwa

By Blessing Ibunge

The Interim Administrator of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Dr. Efiong Akwa, has assured all concerned that the commission will continue to ensure transparency in discharge of its mandate to the people of the region.

This as the administrator pointed at lack of transparency and integrity as one of the biggest challenges to achieving organisational goals.

Akwa made the assertion yesterday in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, during a two-day sensitisation workshop for public servants in NDDC.

He explained that: “This workshop is part of the on-going efforts initiated by President Muhammadu Buhari through the institution of the forensic audit into the activities of the commission from inception to make it better prepared to discharge its mandate to the Niger Delta region and Nigeria.”

According to Akwa, the core objective of the workshop was not just to re-orientate the participants to a new ideology of transparency and integrity but to offer them knowledge and skills required to work more effectively.

He remarked that: “The expected outcome is to enhance the performance and job delivery efficiency of all the commission’s staff to ensure that we are better equipped to offer the Niger Delta region a service that meets their expectations and dreams. And this is very vital to the life and relevance of this commission, to be able to facilitate the sustainable development of the region diligently and efficiently.

“As a commission, the task before us is to establish the institutional framework that will support the prudent and diligent discharge of our duties within the legal and institutional demands for integrity, decency, and due process.”

Akwa observed that the workshop would help to create a new zeal among the staff, encouraging them to become champions for transparency at all procedural and structural levels of work in NDDC.

“The expected outcome is to enhance the performance and job delivery efficiency of all commission’s staff, to ensure that we are better equipped to offer the Niger Delta region a service that fulfils their expectations and dreams,” he said.

The NDDC boss emphasised that the Commission must be willing to bring change to the Niger Delta region in order for it to fulfil its mandate.

“The federal government under President Buhari, and our supervising Minister, Senator Godswill Akpabio, is keen to establish within the commission and within us a new attitude towards our duties within the workplace. If we must become change agents, we must be equipped adequately to do what is right within the law and our moral obligations. That is the new spirit we must embrace in NDDC. That is the new NDDC we must, collectively, build. We owe it to ourselves, this commission, our stakeholders, and this great region. In the end, we will stand right before man and before God,” he said.

The Chairman, Code of Conduct Bureau, Prof Mohammed Isah, in his presentation, said corruption was a worldwide phenomenon, and regretted that Nigeria was usually presented as a country with a high index of the malady.

Isah, who spoke on the topic: ‘Asset declaration is a variable instrument to prevent corruption in public service’, stressed that Nigeria had established institutions meant to check corrupt practices in the public service.