By Dwelleth Morountodun
Rights Activist and Convener of Civil Society Groups (CSOs), Mr. Solomon Adodo, on Wednesday urged President Muhammadu Buhari,
to immediately dissolve the recently screened Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) board nominees.
Adodo, while addressing the media in Abuja, said the president should constitute an unfettered forensic audit of NDDC under the watch of the interim management committee.
He said: “Today we have converged here as Civil Society leaders to re-echo the advocacy for a transparent, corrupt-free system that guarantees the welfare of the common man.
“We are here to cry out against the serial gang rape of our commonwealth and crude deprivations of the Niger Delta people orchestrated by a handful of fiendish self serving elites in the region.”
According to him, the quest for rapid infrastructural development of the Niger Delta region to assuage the adverse effects of petroleum exploration and douse rising youth agitation, NDDC was established in 2000, adding very little achievement has since been recorded then.
The agency was converted to a cash cow for a few unpatriotic elites of the region at the detriment of the collective interest of the people of the region, explaining that the good intentions of the government were deliberately sabotaged and truncated.
He said: “It is on this note that we herein fervidly convey our total gratitude to President Muhammadu Buhari for directing a thorough forensic audit of the financial accruals and expenditure of the Niger Delta Development Commission since inception.
“This is about the biggest singular blow being dealt the monster of corruption by the current government on account of the fact that trillions of naira have allegedly been misappropriated or stolen from the NDDC.
“The step taken by the Minister of Niger Delta, Mr. Godswill Akpabio in an interim management committee to oversee the forensic audit is very welcome and deserving of the support of all in the region.”
Adodo, averred that facts show that some Senators from the Niger Delta region have held the NDDC by the jugular and consistently bled the Commission.
The activist alleged that when the board could not meet these demands through a normal process, the budget of the Commission for the years 2017, 2018 and 2019 were not sent to the National Assembly and in its place the NDDC Management was intimidated into awarding emergency contracts only for three years thereby abandoning the Niger Delta development plan and legacy projects.
In the process, he alleged that a law maker from the region was awarded over 1000 contracts which he claimed he shared to Senators.
The salient question arises to wit, should the contracts be shared among Senators or awarded to competent contractors? The Senate Committee Chairman on NDDC therefore blatantly raped the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and abused the NDDC Act, he said.