NDDC AND THE ANTI-GRAFT HOAX
The federal government is complicit in the failure of the NDDC to realise its mandate
The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has become a prime metaphor for the stranglehold of corruption on our public sector. What was conceived as a regional intervention agency has since degenerated into a cesspool of countless monumental scams. Thousands of contracts have been expended with little or no work done to justify the hundreds of billions of Naira in payments. Successive boards and managements of the agency have been mired in scandals. Politicians have taken turns in converting the agency’s resources into a slush fund for elections, politicking and private aggrandisement.
Over the years, the NDDC has become ‘a cash cow for the government in power where party loyalists and top officials (in the executive, legislature and judiciary) feed fat on the misery of Niger Delta people. That explains why many stakeholders believe that the recent summon of the NDDC management by the Senate Committee on Public Accounts may be just another attempt at window dressing. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with the parliament oversighting activities of public institutions and officials, our experience has been a rehash of endless probes and public hearings that lead to no concrete outcomes.
The rot within the NDDC precedes the current administration but the disrepute into which the commission has fallen in the last seven years is a sad commentary on the avowed commitment of President Muhammadu Buhari to fight corruption as a cardinal undertaking. Investigations into successive NDDC administrations as encapsulated in the recent presidential forensic audit have remained unattended to. Despite the agitations of critical stakeholders, the commission also remains without a substantive board. The minister of Niger Delta, Godswill Akpabio prefers to treat affairs of the NDDC more like a private estate by saddling the commission with cronies.
The recent concern by the relevant Senate and House oversight committees over alleged multibillion Naira scams are only updates on a long-standing public concern on the health of an agency established to address a strategic national problem. From every indication, the Buhari administration seems to have surrendered to the overwhelming rot in the NDDC. But the Nigerian public cannot look away while humongous amounts of money disappear into the sinkhole of private greed and corporate insensitivity and irresponsibility. Something needs to give.
First, the full details of findings by the forensic audit need to be made public quickly. Also, the presidency which ordered the audit needs to act on the findings by referring cases of indictment to the EFCC or the judiciary for prosecution. There is also an urgent need to rescue the NDDC from the present suffocating vice grip of Akpabio by constituting the board in line with the statutes establishing the commission. That should be the starting point of any attempt to redress the wrongs at the commission.
The 2020 theatrics in the House of Representatives–the ‘off the mic’ and the sudden ‘fainting’ incident at the peak of revelations over scandalous NDDC contracts are still fresh. Therefore, no matter how much buck the federal government tries to pass, it remains complicit in the failure of the NDDC to realise its mandate.
Since taking over the supervision of the agency, Akpabio has assumed a larger-than-life posture and appears not to be in a hurry to allow a properly constituted management in place. He has not only appointed and sacked members of the management board in contravention of the extant act establishing the NDDC. We cannot continue to progress in error with an interim management board that is alien to the law and clearly panders to the whims of the minister rather than the collective well-being of the Niger Delta region.
