Florence Uwaeme
Following the directive of President Muhammadu Buhari ordering forensic auditing of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), the Niger Delta Youth Vanguard (NDYV) and Coalition of Niger Delta Ex-Militants (CONDEM) have urged President Muhammadu Buhari to inaugurate the newly named board of the commission.
The youths say inaugurating the new board will assist the forensic audit team that will be put in place to clean the commission of its decades of corruption.
On August 27, President Muhammadu Buhari approved the composition of the Board of the Commission, sacking the interim management which was headed by Prof. Nelson Brambaifa.
However, the new board to be headed by Bernard O. Okumagba has come under intense opposition from stakeholders with governors from Niger Delta area rejecting the nominees for the board who they said did not reflect governance mechanism in the region.
The commission has been left in the hand of another interim leadership headed by Dr Nkwangaga Lelegima who has come under fire for illegal recruitments into the commission’s workforce.
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Yielding to the demand of the governors, Buhari on the 17th of October after a meeting with the governors, ordered a forensic audit of the commission from 2001 till date.
Indeed stakeholders from the region, especially the youths say they are worried about the Lelegima-led interim board of the Commission over allegation of shady employment deals and alleged dubious award and payments for water hyacinth contracts that failed due process.
Engr. Yamaabana Legborsi, National Coordinator of NDYV and Gen. Victor Ebikoma, Leader of CONDEM in a statement made available to theportcitynews said that going by the wide media report on the allegation that the interim management team of the Commission, was set to illegally recruit over 300 new staff without board approval, the interim management team therefore lacks the credibility to guide the forensic audit team expected to be set up.
According the groups: “We advise that the auditing team should not be supervised by the interim team of bureaucrats who are themselves part of the systemic rot that has bedevilled the commission, rather the new board that was not part of the rot be inaugurated to carry out house cleaning exercise under an atmosphere of transparency that will discourage undue interference.
“The delay in confirming the newly composed Governing Board is counterproductive. If the purpose of the ordered audit is to get to the bottom of the NDDC’s failure, despite the huge funding it has enjoyed for almost 20 years, then the best approach is to have the probe done under new management. Obviously, it doesn’t make sense to carry out the ordered audit under the interim management headed by Dr Nkwangaga Lelegima.
“Naysayers can say all they like about President Buhari, we’ll continue to appreciate him as a leader, who has the courage to beam the searchlight into some of the darkest recesses of our national life. He is straightening some of our crooked past and this has positioned his administration in good stead.
“However, if the current interim management of the NDDC is allowed to supervise the forensic audit, the Niger Delta Youth Vanguard, Coalition of Niger Delta Ex-Militants would mobilize its ranks and files and other Pan-Niger Delta groups for a mass action to shut down NDDC”.
