The recent report that 1,732 contractors of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) received over N70 billion mobilisation funds without mobilising to site, as indicated by the Accountant-General of the Federation, highlights the continuing pervasive corruption in the management of this interventionist agency set up to positively turn around the condition of peoples of the Niger Delta region.
The Niger Delta region has, for decades, been a hotbed of crisis arising from militant agitation for oil revenue resource control and the remediation of its degraded environment as a result of oil production activities. The resource control militants had engaged in large scale attacks on oil facilities, vandalisation of oil pipelines leading to disruption of oil flow as well as widespread kidnapping of expatriate oil workers all of which led to massive cuts in oil output and consequent steep decline in national revenue that threatens economic collapse of the country.
In response to this crisis situation, the federal government initiated interventionist programmes to bring development closer to the peoples of the oil producing states. Sadly, federal intervention agencies in the crisis ridden region have themselves been enmeshed in crisis, thereby stalling the very development for which they were established.
The first of these interventionist initiatives was the Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) established in 1992 during the Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s military regime. It was to address the special developmental challenges of the region with a special intervention fund of 1.5 percent from the oil revenue, which was later increased to 3 percent and subsequently raised to 13 percent.
Controversies and rancour, based on allegations of corruption, trailed the management of OMPADEC and by year 2000, the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration felt it has had enough of OMPADEC and got it replaced with the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
As a measure of government’s sustained effort toward accelerated development of the Niger Delta region, a Ministry of Niger Delta was created in 2008 while as part of the pacification of the youthful militants in the region an Amnesty Programme to rehabilitate, educate and debrief the militants was put in place in 2009. The NDDC, however, remains the flagship for the region’s development.
The mandate of the NDDC was to provide both physical infrastructures, human capacity building as well as contribute to remediation of the polluted environment of the Niger Delta region.
Unfortunately, the same charges of corruption, contract inflation, lack of operational transparency, inter-state bickering among the nine states of the Niger Delta region have not abated. A factor that has assumed notoriety in the operations of the NDDC since return to civilian rule in 1999 is the prevalence of political patronage where contracts, appointments and jobs are largely based on political connections, a situation that feeds corruption and impunity in the organisation.
The issue of abandoned projects and refusal of contractors to move to site after collecting hefty mobilsation fees, is tied to political connections and corruption of compromised NDDC officials who lack the moral authority to enforce contractual obligations of contractors. Even where contracts are executed, these are reported to be shoddily done because, according to Prof. Emmanuel Onwioduokit, a former Commissioner for Economic Development in Akwa Ibom state, NDDC officials would have been financially induced to turn a blind eye.
In a tacit acknowledgement of the problem of graft bedeviling NDDC, President Goodluck Jonathan, while inaugurating the Bassey Ewa Henshaw-led NDDC Board on December 16, 2013, had alluded to the enormous grants which had accrued to the commission, but pointing out : ‘’I don’t believe on ground that we have something to show’’.
President Jonathan had admonished the new board not to embark on “voyage of contracts procurement’’, but to first complete on-going projects for the benefit of the people. We consider it an act of impunity and disregard of the Procurement Act, 2007 that two weeks after inauguration, the board could award a split contract totaling N2.7 billion to 30 companies for so-called intelligence gathering in each of the senatorial districts of the nine Niger Delta states.
It is indicative of the selfishness of many leaders of public institutions who value their personal comfort over and above service delivery to the people that less than two months after inauguration, by February 14, 2014, the Henshaw board could also go ahead and spend a whopping N882 million for the purchase of 40 luxury vehicles, including four armoured Toyota Jeeps.
The NDDC has become an all-comers bazaar, as studies show that traditional rulers, ex-militant warlords and their boys, youth leaders, NGOs and sundry politicians are on the take in securing contracts which would not be executed, without any consequences.
We state that this impunity must not stand. Hence, we call on the anti graft agencies, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) the Independent Corrupt Practices and other allied matters Commission ( ICPC) as well as the Police to beam their searchlights on the NDDC. Those found culpable of corrupt enrichment should be made to refund the funds and also serve jail terms as a deterrent. Prolonged failure of NDDC risks taking the nation back to the dark days of a volatile Niger Delta region as disillusionment could induce recourse to violent militancy.
