BY: IFEANYI IZEZE<\/p>\n
It would have just been okay to stay comment on all the ramblings
\nconcerning the Ministry of Niger Delta and the Niger Delta Development
\nCommission (NDDC) but for the fact that the people of the region are
\nbeing deliberately helped to divert from core issues that has completely
\ndisabled the interventionist agency instituted to correct years of
\noutright criminal neglect of the region by the centre, the oil
\ncompanies, and a few privileged natives.<\/p>\n
Good as it sounded that General Mohammadu Buhari has recognized and
\nacknowledged that endemic corruption is the major problem in the agency
\nand ordered a forensic audit of its financial dealings, but is he going
\nabout it the right way?<\/p>\n
Does it surprise anybody that even as we talk, the Interim Management
\nActing Executive Director Projects, Cairo Ojougboh has been carrying on
\nas if he is the forensic auditor, ICPC, and the EFCC all in one. He has
\nalready sentenced hundreds of people in his mind by his unguarded
\nstatements.<\/p>\n
In what supposed to be more of an intelligence gathering assignment,
\nOjougbo has been running manifests of hundreds of projects criminally
\nawarded and paid for with threats of \u201cheads rolling\u201d from his
\ninvestigation. It ought not to be so because by so doing, the interim
\nteam is creating enemies among people whose cooperation the committee
\nmay critically need in the audit proper if we are really serious about
\nsanitising the organisation.<\/p>\n
It is very pathetic that we always squander every opportunity to right
\nthe wrongs of our past in the Niger Delta. The interim team was only
\nasked to create the\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cenabling environment\u201d for the audit proper
\nand not to become the auditor and the prosecutor.<\/p>\n
More importantly, how can you have an Interim Management Committee
\nwithout a deadline for its assignment? By implication, they could be
\nthere for as long as those who appointed them desire. Is that how to go?
\nThis is an outright breach of the Constitution and should be seen as
\nsuch.<\/p>\n
Also, within the pendency of the reign of the Interim Management Team
\nand the actual forensic audit, what happens to the funding of the NDDC
\nand its projects? Does the interim team have the constitutional rights
\nto receive monies on behalf of the commission and engaged in project
\nexecution and\/or new contract awards? If yes, to me it sounds more like
\nthe familiar patronage for party loyalty. And if the answer is no, then
\nthere is an issue of what happens to the agency\u2019s funds.<\/p>\n
Without denying that corruption has remained a major drawdown to the
\neffectiveness of the agency in delivering on its original mandates,
\nmaking it look as if the problem was created by the people of the
\nregion, to me is an outright mischief to steer away from the epicentre
\nof the evil that has been bedevilling the spirit and intent of the
\nsupposed interventionist agency.<\/p>\n
By the NDDC Act, the Commission was supposed to give annual and
\nquarterly report to the President about its activities and expenditures.
\nHas the Commission been doing that before now (2020)? If yes, we may
\nneed to know what was reported to the President. If the agency has not
\nbeen doing that, we also need to know why the Presidency did not compel
\nthem to submit such briefs. Effective supervision could have helped a
\nlot in checkmating the corruption in the NDDC system.<\/p>\n
Nigerians particularly the Niger Delta people need to know the sum total
\nof the amount of money that was supposed to be given to the commission
\nwithin the period under review (even to this year). Was the money
\nreleased to the agency as at when due and if not, we also need to know
\nwhy the balance was withheld and where the withheld money is kept.<\/p>\n
Some Nigerians may think it\u2019s not necessary to ask the above questions
\nbut my people, that is where the major problem of corruption and
\nmisappropriation in the NDDC is being bred.<\/p>\n
Without mincing words, the failure of NDDC to live up to its mandate is
\nattributable to its structure of governance where what happens in the
\ncommission is dictated from Abuja by a political class dominated by
\npeople from outside the Niger Delta. This is the truth!<\/p>\n
Clearly, the major problem of the NDDC is the manipulative exercise of
\npower by those who maintain proximity to the Presidency for self-serving
\ninterests.<\/p>\n
The Commission has merely become an agency for enriching political party
\nloyalists from all sections of the country rather than an organisation
\nset up to deal with the fundamental issues of the development imbalance
\nof the Niger Delta region that has been bearing the full brunt of the
\nadverse effects of producing oil and gas to sustain the entire country.<\/p>\n
Honestly, it should be vexing to any genuine indigene of the Niger Delta
\nregion that in spite of all the efforts (real and cosmetic) to develop
\nthe region, and after billions of naira have been pumped into the region
\nby government and corporate donors, the development imbalance in the
\narea rather than improve, is becoming worse as all indices of
\ndevelopment continue to point south-south.\u00a0 How do explain that despite
\nthat fund for hundreds of projects have been collected by those who were
\nsupposed to do the jobs, the region is littered with huge numbers of
\nabandoned projects and shabbily completed ones? But this is just one
\nhalf of the pathetic story of this failed interventionist agency.<\/p>\n
The other half is that there seemed to be a deliberate sabotage of the
\nentire concept by people who have been in and around the corridors of
\npower in Abuja. If my people know how NDDC contracts are racketeered at
\nthe Presidency and National Assembly, nobody from the region would have
\never accepted any job contract that had to do with NDDC projects.<\/p>\n
The patronage disposition of the successive boards of the commission and
\nthe monumental corruption that characterises their activities clearly
\ndepicted the sorry fact they were unilaterally appointed by the
\nPresidency in Abuja to service loyalty and not the Niger Delta region
\nand its peoples.<\/p>\n
Of a truth, the focal point of corruption and project racketeering that
\nhas bedevilled the NDDC is domiciled in the Presidency. Most of the
\ncontractors or service providers that work for the Commission in the
\nNiger Delta only get a percentage of budgets for project contracts
\nawarded them. So what do they do? They just mobilise to the sites and
\nalso use just a meagre percentage of whatever they got from the Abuja
\nracketeers to do as much as the marked down fund can go. This is the
\nmain cause of why we have thousands of abandoned projects littered all
\nover the region.<\/p>\n
Now let\u2019s look at it: when the Commission came into being in January
\n2001, it was expected to be funded from 15 per cent federal allocation
\nto the nine oil producing states of the region, 50 per cent of
\necological fund due to the nine states, and three per cent of annual
\nbudget of oil producing companies. How this was to be implemented
\nremained at best blurred and at worst obscured.<\/p>\n
For whatever reasons, those that packaged the funding concept including
\nrepresentatives of the various interest groups in the region were blind
\nto the structure being handed them.<\/p>\n
It was an outright mischief by the Presidency to have demanded 15 per
\ncent of the federal allocation to the nine oil producing states of the
\nregion as part of the funding arrangement for what was supposed to be a
\nfederal government interventionist operation in the oil states.<\/p>\n
Also, if the core idea of a special development intervention for the oil
\nproducing region was to compensate and\/or correct years of neglect by
\nthe federal government, how come the various state governments of the
\nregion has to forfeit 50 percent of their entitled allocation from the
\nNational Ecological Fund? So what makes the idea of special attention to
\nthe region in this arrangement when other states of the federation that
\nare not as battered as the states of the region continue to receive 100
\npercent of their monies from the Ecological Fund?<\/p>\n
The bigger problem lies in the oil producing companies being asked to
\nbring 3 percent of their annual budgets to co-fund the NDDC. Have they
\nbeen doing it? The answer is no! It is a near impossibility to get the
\nactual funds from these foreign operators who are masters in the act of
\nvoodoo budgeting and expenditure manipulations. For the oil companies,
\nit has become convenient for them to hide under the excuse that managers
\nof the Commission need to account for monies received before getting new
\ndoles.<\/p>\n
Whether anybody wants to hear this or not, the NDDC was structured to
\nfail. The Presidency was so mischievous that they could not muster
\nenough political will power to be honest in the packaging of the entire
\nidea of declaring a development marshal plan for the victimised oil
\nproducing region. So to rid the agency of the plethora of malaise
\ninfesting it and to make it to become effective as originally intended,
\nthe governance structure must be reworked. The Steve Orosanye Panel
\nReport had very descent recommendations along this line and the
\nPresidency should revisit the report.<\/p>\n