Our Probe, ‘A Welcome Development’ – NDDC
The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has described its probe as a step taken in the right direction.
Director of Corporate Affairs at the commission, Mr Charles Odili, said this in a statement forwarded to Channels Television on Tuesday.
He stated, “It is a welcome development that a probe is coming as a lot of things will come to the fore.
“I did mention that the governors visited Mr President and that the President, as the father of the nation, reserves the right to look at the various components because the Federal Government puts in so much money and would like to see what we are getting out of that effort.”
“The NDDC is over-burdened, being just an interventionist agency. Everybody feels some form of entitlement and the Commission cannot take on the entire gamut of regional expectations alone,” Odili added.
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The statement came barely one week after President Muhammadu Buhari ordered a forensic audit of the operations of the agency, following the persistent criticisms of its activities.
President Buhari, who received governors of the states that make up the Commission, directed that the audit should cover the operations of NDDC from 2001 to 2019.
He had decried that what was on the ground in the South-South region does not justify the huge resources that have been made available to the organisation.
Meanwhile, Odili also responded to insinuations that the NDDC was often over-politicised, noting that that the commission was a political creation and as such could not be entirely divorced from political considerations.
He described the governors of the nine Niger Delta States as critical stakeholders and partners in the development of the region.
According to the NDDC spokesman, the governors play a key role in the process of building a development-oriented Niger Delta,
He said, “The governors form the Advisory Committee which is supposed meet from time to time to look at areas where they can intervene and advise management and board on the way forward.
“So, they are strategic partners in the process of building an egalitarian and a development-oriented Niger Delta region. The Governors of the region are very important and worthy stakeholders in the task of building the region.”
