The Niger Delta Renaissance Coalition has faulted the claim by the Acting Executive Director (Projects) of the Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Dr Cairo Ojougboh, that if list of looters of NDDC is released Nigeria would break, saying it is a ploy to divert attention.
In a statent by Comrade Godknows Sotonye,
National Coordinator, the group challenged Ojougboh to release the list, saying: “If Ojougboh or any of his IMC colleagues has any such information, as Nigerians have repeatedly said, rather than play to the gallery, they should hand it over to the Anti-Corruption agencies to investigate and prosecute all those culpable.”
It said such unverified claim by Ojougboh  does not do justice to the war against corruption by the President Muhammadu Buhari government,  insisting:  “A serious government will not have an appointee of a federal agency raise the alarm about the country going up in flames when it controls the investigation agencies and should instruct the appointee to make the report to these agencies and have them do their jobs.”
The group said doing otherwise gives an impression of protecting “corrupt interests in Buhari’s regime, who employ propaganda to divert the attention of Nigerians from their fraudulent activities.”
On Ojougboh’s attack on the National Assembly for condemning the N51 million monthly imprest for the office of the Acting Managing Director of the NDDC, among others, the group said:  “This is an outrageous display of megalomania and moral deprivation. It is even more dangerous when these claims by Ojougboh have no factual basis.”
It faulted Ojougboh’s claim that the Federal Government makes COVID-19 payment of N30,000, saying: “There is no report or evidence anywhere that the Federal Government is paying every Nigerian N30,000 each. In case Ojougboh does not know what this amounts to, based on a population of 200 million, that comes to N6 trillion! Certainly, no such ’emergency expenditure’ has been undertaken by the Buhari administration since the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, the National Assembly has not awarded its members COVID-19 pandemic bonuses.”
The Niger Delta Renaissance Coalition said members of the NDDC IMC are still in office despite Senate resolution for their sack, “because the Buhari administration has failed to live up to its responsibility to the Nigerian people of punishing corruption and speedily prosecuting those indicted of corrupt practices.”
 The group expressed sadness that despite the fact that the NDDC IMC could not satisfactorily account for N81.5 billion paid out from the NDDC coffers over a period of nine months, the government has failed to act.
It said the Buhari government “cannot continue to act like it condones, even rewards, criminal behaviour by its appointees. Nigerians are waiting for him to act on the corruption that has been exposed at the NDDC.”