As the country was contending with the Anambra State governorship elections, tendencies seemingly aimed at further deepening the disturbing conundrum plaguing the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) floated into reckoning, as if tending to exploit the apparent distraction of the nation, to gain grounds in the public space. In one instance was a brainwave whose thrust is that the NDDC should be scrapped and its functions transferred to the Federal Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs. While sources close to the government have debunked the allegation, the warning by the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) to the federal government over such a contemplation, has peeled off whatever layer of conjecture is associated with the brainwave. The IYC had in a statement by its president, Deacon Peter Timothy Igbifa, referred to the contemplation as “a sinister idea that will nail the fragile peace we currently enjoy in the region”.
The second was the actual emergence of a bill in the Senate sponsored by Senator Olamilekan Adeola representing Lagos West and whose import is to increase the number of participating states in the NDDC to include Lagos, Ogun and Bauchi for now with others likely to emerge in future. The bill is premised on the jaundiced argument of lumping new oil bearing communities and states under the NDDC umbrella. The level of distortion such a development will cause in the NDDC masterplan is easy to imagine. Interestingly too, the bill has met —not surprisingly—with such stiff resistance from senators from the South South, that it fell to the blow of a sudden death. Against the backdrop of the traditional exclusion of the statutory beneficiary states from the effective control of the agency, the foregoing tendencies and others that are similarly invidious, constitute insidious developments aimed at further robbing the Niger Delta people of their heritage.
Proponents of the first brainwave which is the scrapping of the NDDC and transferring its functions to the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs justify their stand with the undeniably pathetic revelations from the recently concluded forensic audit on the agency. According to the audit report, the level of decadence in the agency was so grievous that as many as 13,000 jobs were not executed even as funds for their execution —running into trillions of naira—were disbursed to the designated contractors and consultants. The abandoned projects which were not executed were the complement of roads, bridges, jetties, flood control facilities and buildings, just to name a few.
Such a picture of mindless rape of public largesse actually qualifies for uncommon response from the government. This is just as President Muhamadu Buhari had ridden high on the crest of public expectation, when in the wake of the submission of the forensic audit report to the Presidency, he had promised to ensure retributive justice to all who indulged in the mess at NDDC. So far, however, Nigerians are still waiting for that Presidential pronouncement to actualize, while wondering over how long it will remain in the terrain of ‘hot air’, even with the prospects of it ever materializing vanishing by the day.
Interestingly, the forensic audit came to be by a presidential order as a precedent to the appointment of a substantive board of directors for the agency, following the dissolution of the last one in. Meanwhile, 15 members of a new succeeding board had been cleared statutorily by the Senate on November 16 2019, and are awaiting formal appointment by the President. With the conclusion of the forensic audit, the expectation has been that the Presidency will commence with the appointment of the board of directors who will implement whatever recommendations that emanate from the audit exercise.
But that also seems not to be the case, especially with the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs Godswill Akpabio recently berating advocates of the prompt appointment of a board for NDDC as being unnecessarily medlesome. Infact, he has even progressed to the point of advising such persons from stampeding President Muhamadu Buhari over the appointment of a board for the agency.
In the final analysis, it would seem that the affairs of the NDDC, especially with respect to moving it to the next level, have collapsed into the vortex of indecision and or procrastination by the federal government, even with the clear-cut plan of action that spawned the forensic audit in the first place. Yet this is one tag the federal government should not allow the Nigerian public to hang on its handling of the NDDC matter, as such may project it as abdicating its mandate to resolve the agency’s ills with expected firmness and dispatch, or is simply afraid of faces on the list of culprits.
If there is one relief Nigerians across the country, in the diaspora and especially the Niger Delta region are waiting for, it is the long expected peep into the identities of the so mentioned, non-performing contractors and consultants, and the officials of the agency who served as accomplices to collectively plunder the NDDC. In that context therefore, the silence of the government is to say the least disturbing and is sowing suspicion of fears in its circles over an avalanche of negative fall outs, if the recommendations of the audit are implemented. The strong point in this context is that as it is unmasked public knowledge, a wider cross section of NDDC contracts including the failed ones, were awarded to fronts for highly placed officials in government and the cream of society comprising individuals, many of whom were not even indigenes of the Niger Delta.
Another negative in the argument for scrapping the agency desires from the very history of the agency which has come to make it the most acceptable platform for addressing the development concerns of the region. Hence scraping it or diminishing its relevance in any way is to take Nigeria back to the past and provoke the region into restiveness once more. This consideration therefore makes all sponsors of its scraping, enemies of progress of Nigeria.
Hence, all that well-meaning Nigerians are saying is, President Muhamadu Buhari, kindly inaugurate the NDDC board as soon as possible to assuage the already rising tempers. For as the African proverb goes ‘when the hand of a monkey stays too long in the pot of soup, it may start looking like the hand of a human being.
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