The Social Development Integrated Centre, a nongovernmental organization, has urged that contractors indicted in the 13, 000 abandoned projects awarded by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) across the region be made public and prosecuted accordingly.
The call was made at a town hall meeting in Port Harcourt organized by Social Action.
Mr. Ken Henshaw, Executive Director of “We The People”, condemned years of covert corruption by NDDC leadership, which he said has hampered the commission’s mandate to develop the region, during his presentation on the theme “Promoting probity in the NDDC to rebuild accountability tenets and public trust.”
Henshaw insisted that if corrupt practices by NDDC leaders are criminalized, the region will benefit from the Commission’s establishment
“In the midst of all the corruption scandals we heard at NDDC, and by the way, the corruption scandals did not begin in 2020 or 2021, but have been present since the establishment of NDDC in 2000.”
We have always had corruption scandals involving various NDDC boards and leaders.
“The corruption scandals this time around, as reviewed partially by statements attributed to former NDDC heads attributed to the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, also reviewed at the National Assembly panel, and what we heard coming out of the forensic audit report shared recently, those scandals caused people to begin asking that the commission be scrapped.”
“However, as much as we disagree, we cannot abolish the Niger Delta Development Commission, but we do recognize the need for us to restructure, reposition, reinvent, and redirect that Commission in such a way that it meets the mandate and drives the development of the region.”
“You cannot reposition a panel or a Commission to begin living up to the development mandate.”
We should not give people the impression that corruption is not a crime. The NDDC has been acting as if corruption was not a crime; as if selling contracts, for example, was not a crime.
“As a region, we need to tell the world that we insist on criminalizing corruption, and the only way we can do that is by requesting that those people who have been indicted in the National Assembly probe panel, the forensic audit report, be prosecuted in accordance with the law.”
“It is not enough for you to say that 13, 000 NDDC projects have been abandoned; we need to see those who committed this crime arrested, indicted, and prosecuted in a court of law,” Comrade Henshaw insisted.
Earlier, Mr. Botti Isaac, Programme Coordinator of Social Action, stated that the purpose of the town hall meeting was to mobilize citizens as stakeholders’ voices to contribute to the debate on how to reposition the NDDC for effective and inclusive service delivery in light of the recent forensic audit report and its revision.
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Botti advised the government to begin investigating, indicting, and prosecuting individuals or cooperating bodies who are guilty of misappropriating public funds, particularly those intended for development.
“We believe that for a long time, no one has said anything about the forensic audit report and that it will be an entity point toward sanitizing the NDDC.”
We cannot restructure or reposition the NDDC without taking a close look at the recommendations in this report, as well as some of the issues raised.
There have been serious allegations of corruption, contract racketeering, abandoned projects, and the squandering of over N3 trillion on contracts that never existed.
“These are areas where the government should look into and begin to call for investigations, possible prosecutions, and arrests of culpable individuals to help send the message that the NDDC is no longer business as usual.”
Because it is a government agency that is expected to carry out interventions that will promote development in the Niger Delta, it must live up to that responsibility, which is why we convened this meeting.”
