Following controversies of corruption cases rocking the Niger Delta Development Commission, Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Professor Itse Sagay, has charged President Muhammadu Buhari to remove all the board members of the commission and inaugurate a fresh one.
Sagay mad this call on Tuesday in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today program monitored by The New Diplomat.
According to Sagay, “My view is that everybody should be removed right now. Clear the place, sweep it clean. Start afresh with a new set of people. I will suggest that everybody there should be cleared out and the President should appoint a new set of people very quickly under temporary conditions so that a permanent board and management can be established in the place that will then be monitored” he said.
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Sagay described the corruption allegations rocking the commission as mind-boggling while wondering why forensic auditing cannot be done despite having a regular board handling the affairs of the commission.
The professor recalled that when some appointments were made into the commission, he was against the character of two nominees then.
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He regretted that the question mark posed on some members of the NDDC has given a bad impression about the Niger Delta region.
This comes shortly after the 2019 budget defence of the NDDC by the agency’s Interim Management Committee (IMC) suffered a setback.
The NDDC team comprising its acting Managing Director, Professor Kemebradikumo Pondei, Executive Director (Project), Dr Cairo Ojougboh, among appeared before the National Assembly in Abuja to defend the agency’s budget for the previous year.
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They, however, could not successfully defend the agency’s budget as the lawmakers pointed out some discrepancies in the budget.
Recall that the NDDC has been rocked with scandals of corruption recently with the Senate revealing that the IMC of the NDDC expended N81.5billion in just about eight months.
Chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee probing the NDDC, Senator Adebunmi Adetunmbi disclosed the amount was contained in the submission of the IMC to the Ad-hoc Committee.
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Ajetunmobi said the IMC (I) chaired by Mrs. Gbene Joi Nunieh between October 2019 to February 18, 2020 spent a total of N22.5billion out of the N81.5billion.
He added that the IMC (II) chaired by Professor Kemebradikumo Pondei between February 19, 2020 to May 31st 2020, spent N59.1billion.
Breakdown of spending show that community relations gulped N1.3billion; Condolences N122million; Consultancy N83.8million; COVID-19 intervention N3.14billion; Duty Tour Allowance (DTA) – N486million (N302million of the amount spent by IMC II); Imprest N790.9million; Lassa fever – N1.956billion; legal fees N906million; Logistics N61million; maintenance N61million and medicals – N2.6billion.
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Others are: Overseas travel (to UK for graduation ceremony in May 2020) N85.6million; Payments for projects – N38.6billion; Public Communications N1.121billion; Security (IMC I and II) N744million; Staffing Related Payment (Salaries and Allowances) N20.9billion; Stakeholders Engagement (by IMC II from February 19 to May 31st 2020) N248.9million and General travels – N56.5million.
The Ad-hoc Committee questioned why some of the payments, including those for projects were made to staff of the Commission.
Also, Adetunmbi demanded to know how N3.14billion allowance for COVID-19 was shared among the management and employees of the commission with one staff receiving N10million as “palliative”.
A further breakdown, according to the Chairman of the Ad hoc Committee, showed that NDDC paid N7million each to two other staff, N5 million to three staff each, N3 million each to 148 staff, N1.5 million each to 157 staff, and N1millon each to 497 staff.
Read also: How NDDC’s IMC Spent N81.5bn In Eight Months, Senate Pane
The least staff who were mostly cleaners and security personnel in the commission got N600,000 each.
He also revealed that N475 million out of the amount was given to the “police for facemasks and hand sanitizers.”
He disclosed that N1.5billion in total was spent on NDDC staff as COVID-19 relief.
IMC Chair, Pondei while taking questions from the senators on the much amount it spent on staff as COVID-19 relief claimed that: “at the beginning of COVID-19, the NDDC as an intervention agency decided to intervene.
“The intervention came in this very form. We had challenges which triggered the intervention of a cash of N775 million to the nine states. They did not receive the same amount of money because in NDDC the states are treated according to the quantum of oil production.
“NDDC has over 4000 staff across the nine states each of these staff are also like representatives of their people. We were under a lot of pressure so we had to pay them too,” he said.
Executive Director Projects of NDDC, Ojougboh, told the committee that no money is missing in the commission as all expenditures made where in accordance with due process.
He added: “In recent years, several allegations of corruption and unwholesome practices have been levelled against the Commission.
“The allegation that the EIMC has misapplied the sum of N40 Billion since inception is unfounded.”
Recall The New Diplomat had reported that the amount of money allegedly mismanaged at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) could be in excess of N40bn often reported in the media as an anti-corruption group recently said it has uncovered additional N35 billion alleged to have been illicitly expended by the Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the NDDC.
The anti-corruption group, Act for Positive Transformation Initiative said with its fresh revelation, a whooping sum of N75bn has been allegedly lost to corruption at the Commission, asking the Presidency and the National Assembly who had already initiated a probe into the scandal to re-launch again and beam its searchlight afresh on N75bn and not the initial N40bn it set out to investigate.
