The Niger Delta Peoples Forum, NDPF, a Civil Society Organization, has urged Muhammadu Buhari President to withhold the transmission of the 2021 budget of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, to the National Assembly.
This followed an alleged meeting between the National Assembly Committees for Niger Delta Affairs and the Sole Administrator of the NDDC, Mr. Effiong Akwa, to prepare ground for the consideration of the commission’s 2021 budget.
Making its position known in statement signed by its National Chairman, Boma Ebiakpo, recently, the group said that the purported meeting between the NDDC Sole Administrator and the National Assembly Committees on Niger Delta Affairs, was to further arm-twist the President and the lawmakers to continue in giving authority to the management to perpetrate illegality.
The group urged the President to ensure that the board of the commission, as already screened, is inaugurated before he transmits the NDDC 2021 budget to the National Assembly for consideration.
The statement read in part:
“The attention of Niger Delta Peoples Forum has been drawn to a story in an online news platform, Premium Times, on January 11, 2022, with the headline ‘National Assembly panel meets with NDDC over 2021 budget’.According to the story, at a time when the National Assembly was on break, the NDDC Sole Administrator, Effiong Akwa, surreptitiously met with a joint session of the National Assembly committees on Niger Delta Affairs. This was apparently to attempt to embark upon another cycle of illegality preparatory to consider an NDDC 2021 budget (which is yet to be transmitted to the National Assembly by President Buhari) to be defended by an illegal sole administrator contraption that is alien to the NDDC Act, the law governing the operations of the Commission.
“In what is certain to cause outrage in the Niger Delta region that is already agitated over the delay in inaugurating a substantive board, in compliance with the law to ensure proper corporate governance, and fair representation of the nine constituent states, this latest gambit, seen as a ploy to test the waters of patience of the region, and pliability of the Buhari Presidency, is a gamble taken too far.
“The NDDC Act … is clear on the process for the approval of NDDC annual Budget by the National Assembly. In Part V, 18(1), it states that ‘the Board shall, in each year, submit to the National Assembly through the President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces an estimate of the expenditure and income of the Commission during the next succeeding year for approval.
“The NDDC Act also stipulates that the Board and management (comprising the MD and two EDs) shall be appointed by the President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, subject to the confirmation of the Senate.
“But in the past two years, the Commission has been administered in breach of the law through illegal interim managements/sole administrator contraptions administering a total of N799 Billion approved budgets by the National Assembly for the 2019 and 2020 financial years. The 2020 Financial year for NDDC’s budget as approved by the National Assembly expired on December 31, 2021.
“Rather than continue the illegality of administering NDDC with a sole administrator contraption that is not known to the NDDC Act, we urge President Buhari to halt the ongoing charade at NDDC, abide by the law and inaugurate a substantive governing board for NDDC to ensure proper corporate governance, checks and balances, probity, accountability, and equitable representation of the nine constituent states that have endured two years of the Commission being run like a personal fiefdom.
“We urge President Buhari to resist attempts by certain officials in his government to goad him into further acts of illegality in administering NDDC by not transmitting the 2021 Budget of NDDC to the National Assembly before the inauguration of a substantive NDDC Board because doing otherwise is further breach of the law governing NDDC.”
THE group expressed regret that though the report of the forensic audit of NDDC had been submitted by Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, to President Buhari on September 2, 2021, the President is yet to fulfill his own promise almost six months after.
“It is in breach of the NDDC Act for the current Sole Administrator or anyone else to administer the NDDC and utilize the huge funds accruing to it on a monthly basis without passing through the legal requirement of appointment as stipulated in the NDDC Act.
However, the leadership of the Host Communities of Nigeria, Oil and Gas, HOSCON, has absolved President Buhari of blame over the delay in the inauguration of the NDDC Board, stressing that whatever fate that has been befalling the commission over the past two years was as a result of the disunity and disagreement among stakeholders in the Niger Delta.
Speaking with The New Diplomat in a telephone chat today, the National Chairman of HOSCOM, Dr. Mike Emuh, said the President was hamstrung by series of litigations which are against the inauguration of the board, adding that in that circumstance, the President has no choice but to wait on the decision of the courts.
“It is our people that we are to hold responsible. Mr. Bernard Okumagba was nominated for the position of the Managing Director of the NDDC but the Itsekiri took him to court. Bernard Okmagba is from Warri South Local Government Area, the same Local Government with the Itsekiri. The matter is still in court. So, will you now blame Mr. President for not inaugurating the board of the commission when the matter is in court? That is the issue. We fight ourselves unnecessarily. We fight too much with ourselves. It is not Mr. President, my dear brother,” he lamented.
