By Emmanuel Uffot
There is palpable anxiety in the fold of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC and other stakeholders as indication are rife that the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs Ministry Umana Okon Umana is desirous of implementing the Forensic Audit Report Recommendation which had relatively been lying in limbo with the Presidency several months after its submission before the recent pronouncement by President Muhammadu Buhari that its implementation has begun.
This fact emerged at the recent retreat held by the Ministry for the management and senior staff of the Commission, as part of the oversight function of the ministry to acquaint the minister about affairs in the Commission as well providing a platform for the Minister to intimate both the ministry and the commission of his agenda.
This fear within the staff and management of the Commission is seen not to be unconnected with the Minister’s remark recently during a parley with senior staff and management of NDDC after assumption of duty. He used the occasion to spell out his agenda for the commission which he said revolves around his resolve to reposition NDDC to deliver on its core mandate.
He said the rebranding would enable it serve as a vehicle to drive socio-economic development of the region, and reiterated the fact that he initiated the management retreat to be held which was held to further his policy goals of repositioning the commission.
One of the imports of the minister’s remark at the retreat which has sent shivers among a cross section of staff of the commission is his query on the disproportionate recruitment of staff during the lockdown and said the ministry would look into petitions over irregular promotions and deployment of staff.
He said the review of the Forensic Audit Report into the operations of NDDC is being concluded and stressed his commitment to the implementation of its recommendations.
He directed that a list of completed projects in the awaiting NDDC payments should be published for public consumption and scrutiny while stakeholder’s forum should be held to review the existing templates for project delivery. Umana disclosed that one of his key agenda through the Ministry would be to prioritise project execution and payments that deliver up positive impact for the region and country. He directed that all contracts on water hyacinths in Niger Delta should be suspended while all such ongoing projects should be reviewed.
He also assured that action was been taken to constitute the board of NDDC in line with the extant law that set up the commission.
However, that the management and staff have a lot to worry about their fate with the coming of the new Minister and the uncertainty over the recommendations of the forensic audit report of the commission was re-echoed at the two-day management retreat organized by the Ministry of Niger Delta whereby President Buhari directed that the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry should carry out a comprehensive staff audit of NDDC to achieve right staffing and proper placement.
The President who was represented by the Minister of Transportation Muazo Sambo, disclosed that his government has started implementing the recommendations of the NDDC audit report submitted to it in September 2021 and promise the appointment of the long-awaited board of directors for the commission soon. “In pursuance of our determination to curb corruption and in response to the call of the governors of South-South for a Forensic audit of NDDC from inception to 2019. The report has been submitted and implementation of its recommendation has commenced in phases. This process will usher in a new management and board for the commission”.
However, the concerns of staff and management is said to have deepened a recent media report which went viral that the new Minister was mooting a separate forensic audit which will also beam searchlight on activities of the current interim management headed by Effiong Akwa. The report had reportedly stated that the Minister may have jettison the subsisting recommendations of the previous forensic report which was submitted to President Buhari in September 2021 and may institute another one which would be broad and could lead to many heads rolling in the3 Commission.
But the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs has come out to debunk such insinuation carried in the media as false that the minister wants to jettison the initial forensic audit report and institute its own. The Director of Press and Public Relations in the ministry Ms. Patricia Deworitshe who made the clarification reiterated the commitment of the minister to implement the audit report recommendations to the letter. She said there was no truth in the claim. According to her, some unscrupulous elements were only trying to cause further crisis in Niger Delta. She had therefore all stakeholders in the region and the public to disregard the news report.
It could be recalled that a national newspaper had last week alleged a move by the minister to halt the phased implementation of the forensic audit report of the NDDC.
The issue of the forensic audit of the Commission came to the fore last year when the South- South governors made representation to the President advocating for a reorganization of the commission to cleanse it of corruption that has permeated the place and erode the primary goal it was set up to serve as an interventionist platform to coordinate the development of the Niger Delta region.
To further the audit of NDDC, the then Minister Senator Godswill Akpabio sacked the management team of the Commission to pave way for a smooth audit. This development led to the revealing of cans of worms and the level of deep-rooted corruption and profligacy by the existing management and previous ones.
Insight into the report and recommendations as submitted by former minister Godswill Akpabio showed that 13.000 projects were abandoned in the region. Again, beyond most of the projects not executed after the contractors collected chunk of the contract sum, most of the contracts for projects were grossly inflated. The audit also revealed that the existing management prior to the audit had spent hundreds of millions of Naira on palliatives to staff while the commission was unable to account for N90.9 billion.
Other findings showed that the Commission had deviated from its primary goal of serving as a platform to institute development of the area and empowerment of people of the area to become cash cow for political settlement.
Akpabio had in the heat of the audit and first-hand discoveries of the glaring corruption perpetrated in the commission over the years since its inception in 2001, argued that this had made the region remained backward since 1958 after the discovery of oil despite successive government’s efforts through various interventionist programmes and projects.
Some of the recommendations contained in the audit report, include the downsizing of the NDDC’s board.
To reduce cost, the audit team led by Kabir Ahmed recommended that members of the board should henceforth be appointed on a part-time basis.
On Oil companies default in their statutory contributions to NDDC, the report recommended that government should withdraw the license of any oil company which defaults for a period of three years.
The auditors also recommended a deduction of 15 percent ecological fund at source and be paid to the commission because both the federal and state governments have failed to make payments to the commission.
Also, as a measure of effective revenue collection, the report recommended that henceforth Federal Inland Revenue Services should collect funds on behalf of NDDC from oil companies in the country.
Other key recommendations we gathered is in the area of curbing profligacy in bogus allowances to staff, unnecessary expenditure on issues that does not impact positively on the development of the region, prudent management of resources to achieve optimum goal of the commission and issue of bloated and redundant staff.
With the new minister Umana now in the saddle to pilot the affairs of the Ministry in the next nine months before the expiration of this government, the vexed issue that has remained a source of concern among the stakeholders of the region has been the non- appointment of board of after it was sacked.
Sources at the Presidency had revealed that the delay in the institution of the board was at the instance of the president who instructed that the NDDC board would only be put in place after the release of the report. And this promise was re-echoed both the president and the minister of Niger Delta Affairs during the management retreat held recently in Abuja by the ministry.
It is significant to note that the youths backed by concerned citizens of the region are angered by the mind-boggling revelation of fraud and blatant looting of funds meant for the development of the region by subsistent NDDC management dating back to the inception of the Commission in 2001. It is in the light of this that they are still advocating for the speedy constitution of a new board of the NDDC to reposition the NDDC to serve the purpose it was meant for. Not only that, they want the authorities to recover all the looted funds from those found culpable and make public the report and recommendations.
The fraud that had been going on in the NDDC over time, which served as a conduit pipe by management to siphon funds and feather the nest of political cronies led to the institution of a forensic audit masterminded by the Governors of the South -South. This became the first key agenda of the then Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio on assumption of office. The audit which unearths the milking of the NDDC funds through inflated contracts and frivolous bogus expenditure with abandoned projects littering the region, is what has given much concern to some notable stakeholders hence the call for more funds for the Ministry.
This call for more funds for the Ministry was re-echoed during the 2022 budget defense of the ministry of Niger Delta Affairs by the then minister, Senator Akpabio. For Senator James Manager, the budgetary allocations to the ministry in 2021 and 2022 were too meagre to achieve anything meaningful in the region. He had stressed that anything humanly possible should be done in that regard to sustain the current peace enjoyed in the region.
Also expressing concern like Senator Manager, Senator George Sekibo, pointedly questioned why roads with no economic value in the area were given more priority than the East-West Road which he noted, carries the economic burden of the nation. “Let us address the issue of the issue of the East-West Road squarely as we do to other roads, we are not being fair to the region”.
Indeed, the position of the senators was consequent upon the earlier presentation made by Senator Akpabio at the Senator Peter Nwaoboshi led Senate Committee on Niger Delta Affairs. He had noted that the 2022 budgetary allocation to the ministry in the sum N26,592,560,184 billion is considered meagre and inadequate considering the mandate and goals of the ministry to meet the yearnings and aspirations of the people. He reiterated the fact that the impact of Covid-19 pandemic which had necessitated the intervention of the ministry to ameliorate the infrastructural and human capital development of the people amidst the dwindling budgetary allocation to the ministry prompted the need for budgetary increase.
Indeed, the need to make an impact in this short period by pursuing to completion some of the abandoned projects and ongoing ones like the East- West are daunting task now confronting the new minister. But he has promise to hit the ground running and make sure he pursues the very important East-West Road to ensure its completion.
But for the Interim Administrator/CEO of NDDC Mr Effiong Akwa who is believed to be carrying out some reorganization in the commission, the staff, contractors and concern stakeholders of the region, the following weeks and months are pregnant with uncertainties of the what the forensic audit report recommendations phased implementations which the President stated has begun will bring.
