All things being equal, this new year 2021 may be looking up for the Niger Delta Development Agency (NDDC), with the month of February marking a watershed in its life as President Muhamadu Buhari is expected to commission its long-delayed 13-storey permanent headquarters in Port Harcourt, either physically or virtually. According to the Minister for Niger Delta Affairs Godswill Akpabio, the Ministry and the agency under his watch have adopted a work-plan for 2021 with highlights that include the commissioning of the headquarters along with over 50 other projects in various parts of the region. In the same vein the Minister of State for the ministry – Omotayo Alasoadura, also mooted the commitment of the agency to ensure that things are done differently with accountability and transparency to ensure sustainable development in the region. How Alasoadura’s take on the agency’s projections will work out, given its present wallow in perfidy, remains to be seen.
In a related development however, was the inauguration of two committees by Effiong Akwa the embattled Sole Administrator of the Commission namely, the NDDC Reforms Committee with its Chairman as Anslem Agommuoh, a director in the agency, and the Projects Implementation Committee headed by Julius George, another director also in the agency. In Akwa’s kitty was also the confirmation by him that the N453.2 billion 2021 budget of the agency had been approved by the National Assembly, while the long abandoned East West Road will be completed within the next one year along with all other outstanding projects. Akwa had made his revelations during a courtesy call by the NDDC management on the elder statesman Edwin Clark, at the latter’s Abuja residence. It is also important that one of the takes from the meeting with Clark was his homily that the NDDC should be returned to the oversight of a statutorily established board of directors, to save it from the present pall of illegitimacy which its various illegal leadership dispensations including Akwa’s, suffer from across the region and even the entire country.
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Against the backdrop of the commission’s history of epileptic performance and in particular the recent trend of bizarre developments associated with its leadership politics, outcomes like the completion of the headquarters and inauguration of the designated committees along with other promised positives, jointly qualify as a new year gift to the hard-pressed Niger Delta region. Even as much of the dividends from these positives may only exist in the realm of proposals and expectations, they at least offer a frame that justifies a new look at the NDDC and its fortunes. For beyond any doubt, these areas – namely the 20-year stalemate in its headquarters completion, the crying need for structural reform of the Commission and the miasma over the completion of projects, constituted perhaps some of the most disturbing weaknesses of the commission over the 20 years of its lack-lustre existence.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time the commission has fed Nigerians with highfalutin verbiage featuring promises that were eventually not kept, in the place of effective delivery of projects and facilities. It is on record that throughout its life the commission had complied with its statutory mandate mostly in the breach, with its operations marred by undue politicisation which in turn spawned serial infighting among its officials who represented the various constituent states and even communities within states. The present new normal in the place where leadership has for some time not been provided by a statutorily constituted board of directors, but by a succession of Interim Management Committees and now a Sole Administrator, speaks volumes on the degenerate state of affairs in the agency. Just as well is the ongoing forensic audit of the agency and plethora of issues which surround the exercise, accentuate the fact that business can no more go on as usual in the commission.
It is in the foregoing context that the NDDC which shall emerge from the trending alchemy as concocted by the Godswill Akpabio dispensation in the agency, remains of significant importance to interests, beyond its immediate stakeholders, many of whom may still not have appreciated the core issue at stake as being how to save the ailing agency back to the track from which it derailed years ago. It is also in this context that the homily from Edwin Clark that the agency should as soon as possible revert back to the status quo of operating under the guidance of a properly constituted board of directors, enjoys utmost relevance and timeliness. Incidentally, this position is not exclusive to him but has since the beginning of the imposition of the aberrant IMCs and Sole Administrator regimes at the agency, been trending from the National Assembly to other public opinion circles across the country. Needless to add that the dispensation has also earned for President Muhamadu Buhari, Godswill Akpabio and Effiong Akwa, significant vilification in the public domain. It remains to be seen if the obduracy with which the government treated the strident calls for regularization of the leadership of the agency, will also be extended to the clarion call by Clark.
As circumstances now dictate, the future of the NDDC is in the crucible of reforms and requires a complement of stakeholder interventions for it to come out right. The situation specifically assigns roles to each category of stake-holders to execute as needful. For instance the National Assembly is yet to address itself to ensuring that this agency which it created in 2000, for the express purpose of transforming the Niger Delta region functioned as intended. Against the backdrop of scurrilous tales of some of its members of past and present assemblies concerning themselves with cherry-picking contracts from successive managements of the agency, the current Ninth National Assembly owes the country the duty of decisively addressing itself to the challenges of structural incontinence of the NDDC. It is nothing but a shame that with at least a committee in the Senate and House of Representatives to oversight the NDDC over the years, the agency’s slide into perfidy was unchecked.
Another level of stakeholders remain the governors of the nine NDDC states who also owe a duty to ensure that the agency thrives after the ongoing exercise in line with the provisions of the agency’s act that they provide guidance to it. Given their endowment of statutory powers, the fortunes of the NDDC or otherwise, actually rests with them.
Beyond the foregoing are the various youth and sundry pressure groups in the region, many of whom are easily compromised with miserly handouts to vacillate over the core issues that the commission should address. The earlier the deviating ones wake up from their largely noncommittal approach to the messy state of the commission, the better for all.
Just as the aphorism goes that a stitch in time saves nine, so the needful intervention of relevant stakeholders in NDDC’s reforms will save future problems. And the time to act is now.
