NDDC: Akpabio, Akwa speak on Forensic Audit, new Board
The Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio on Tuesday announced that the forensic audit of the NDDC will soon be concluded and a new Board for the commission would be composed by President Buhari.
‘’The auditors have pretty much finished with the head office, and on Monday, they will move to the state offices.
“In the next few months, they will turn in their report, and the President will act on it,” – Akpabio announced at a crowded press conference in the Boardroom of the commission.
The briefing was arranged as part of the activities leading up to the formal commissioning of the building.
The minister reiterated his earlier pledge that the audit is not meant to witch-hunt anybody, but is intended to identify weak governance issues and operational processes that have impeded the work of the commission.
The auditors, he added, will suggest ways to reposition and strengthen the organization. Akpabio noted that the National Assembly is currently amending the NDDC Act to address certain challenges the agency is facing, especially the challenge of collection its income from the oil companies.
He confirmed that NDDC will now focus on regional planning and major infrastructure projects that interconnect the region.
The journalists, he said, were invited to tour the edifice and see the enormity of work done in the last one year on the building. Both the minister and the Interim Administrator/chief executive of the commission, Barr Efiong Akwa, spoke to the journalists.
The meeting opened with a brief introductory remark by Akwa in which he noted that the reporters were invited ‘’to see things for yourselves.”
He traced the history of the building which started when Chief Horsefall, managing director of the defunct OMPADEC laid the foundation stone of the building in 1996. Since then, 17 chief executives have supervised the project, but none was able to bring it to completion.
‘’I must thank President Buhari for his commitment to the development of the Niger Delta region and the Minister of the Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Akpabio for his determination to the completion of the building’’, Akwa enthused.
His words: ‘’When Akpabio was appointed minister in August 2019, this place was swampy. He made a request to the President that the property should be completed.
“Resources were deployed; the old contractor was dropped because he had failed and a new one who was appointed (just before Akpabio came in) was given the marching order’’.
He noted that moving the supervision of the NDDC from the Presidency to the Ministry of the Niger Delta was a major reason for the completion of the project.
The chief executive also thanked the immediate past interim management headed by Prof Pondei, the contractor and NDDC management ‘’who cooperated with us’’.
Mr Akwa commended Gov Nyesom Wike for providing a conducive environment for the construction project and Rivers youths, especially Okrika youths for maintaining the peace.
‘’Throughout the construction period, Okrika youths had never come here to make trouble’’, he said.
In fielding questions from the assembled journalists, Senator Akpabio also spoke on a wide range of issues including the problems of the commission since inception, indebtedness of some IOCs to the commission, new scholarship scheme by NDDC and the attitude of the South-South governors.
The minister regrets the poor performance of the commission, noting that the commission should have done more to fund major roads, hospitals, agriculture and industrial growth in the region.
He mentioned the fact that the commission was not only paying N300 million yearly on rent on the former head office building, but even the building was not connected to the national grid for electricity in the last ten years.
‘’It would have cost the agency just N15 million to connect to the national grid, but the previous managements preferred to be running generators every day for the past ten years’’, he said, adding ‘’even the purchase of diesel was an industry on its own’’.
The minister said that some IOCs have refused to meet their obligations to the commission because of a lacuna in the NDDC Act.
The ongoing amendment of the ACT, he said, would address that. He promised that NDDC will soon commence a scholarship scheme for Niger Delta students in Nigerian universities, contrary to current practice in which only postgraduate scholarships are extended to students studying overseas.
‘’Last year, the commission spent $12 million to pay school fees for students overseas under its postgraduate scholarship scheme. This sum could sponsor 3,000 students yearly in Nigerian universities’’, the minister said to the applause of the journalists.
Akpabio decries the statement credited to SS governors who met in Asaba yesterday. The governors had reportedly asked President Buhari to withhold NDDC’s funding until a Board is composed.
Akpabio noted that a Board would be constituted after the audit is concluded, but wonder the sincerity of the governors when most of them have not even conducted local government elections.
‘’What right do the governors have to ask the President to withhold NDDC’s funding when they themselves have not even conducted local government elections, and the President has never withheld their FAAC allocation’’, the minister quipped.
In concluding the two-hour session, Akpabio commended Akwa for his competence, leadership and managerial acumen.
He noted that there’s been peace and stability in the commission since Akwa was appointed chief executive on December 12.
‘’Within a few days of his appointment, Akwa succeeded in getting the National Assembly to approve a budget for the commission – something that never happened in years’’, he said, noting that several stakeholders have commended Akwa for his performance in the last three months.
