Follow Us on Google
A lot of people seem to have glossed over the genesis of the current forensic audit and fact-finding inquiry in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). Governors in the zone, that is, South-South, in a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, expressed worry that the commission had not fulfilled its mandate, in spite of several billions appropriated to it. We might as well trace the struggles that led to the eventual formation of the commission.
Shortly after the independence of Nigeria, Major Adaka Boro began the battle to liberate the Niger Delta region. A student union leader at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, he left the campus, where he was studying Chemistry, to form the Niger Delta Volunteer Force, an armed militia, when he insisted that the region was getting the short end of the stick in terms of proceeds of Nigeria’s oil. The group declared the Niger-Delta Republic on February 23, 1966, and fought with the federal forces for 12 days before he was defeated. He was jailed for treason, but was later granted amnesty on the eve of Nigerian civil war. He fought on the side of the Nigerian Army but died in questionable circumstances.
The critical thing here is that Adaka Boro was one of the earliest purveyors of the Niger Delta struggle. Later, there was Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by the regime of General Sani Abacha on November 10, 1995. He was 54 when the hangman sent him to the great beyond. His execution, along with some members of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People did not stop the agitation for a better deal for the Niger Delta People. Wiwa and his group were non-violent in contradistinction to the agitators that came after him. Asari Dokubo seems to be the most prominent of the new set of agitators in something that had become a movement.
The agitators had begun to disrupt oil production in a manner that defied military action. When former President Olusegun Obasanjo came into office in 1999, the establishment of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) became a reality on June 5, 2000. It was set up to fast-track development of the zone, with budgetary allocations and direct payments from oil companies in the zone. Environmental degradation and general infrastructural decay became the lot of the region, prompting the commission, which the Nigerian nation used to try and solve the problem. This was to be complemented by the statutory allocations to the concerned states.
The intention was to show a difference in the region as one that habours a large chunk of the wealth of the nation. It did not come easy. People put their lives on the line, and actually paid the supreme price for a supposed good life for the region. In a nation forcibly centralised by the military, where member states are not in control of their resources, it seemed that the commission was the best the region could get under the circumstance.
Since inception, it would seem that the agency has not met the need for which it came to life. The recent allegation of a missing N81 billion, for which the President has authorized a forensic audit, has opened a Pandora’s box, giving an inkling that all may, indeed, not be well with the NDDC. In the process of the search for the missing funds by the National Assembly, more cockroaches have begun to crawl out of various cupboards. The trending ones are that some lawmakers, in the Senate and House of Representatives, get contracts but hardly execute them.
Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, had stirred the hornet’s nest when he appeared at the sitting of the fact-finding committee of the House of Representatives and said committee heads get jobs from the NDDC. He was dared to release the list, he was hesitant but has finally released same. The ball is now in the court of those members and the Speaker, who said he had directed that a case of perjury be initiated against the minister.
I have no axe to grind with house members getting jobs from the commission, if they have competent firms to do the job. If you are a contractor before you became elected, it should not preclude you from your previous business, as long as you attend plenary, and discharge your duties. That is where my support stops. It does not include getting the jobs, abandoning them, and causing the c ommission to pay you. Members who do that have no business in the National Assembly because such actions are antithetical to the people they claim to represent. This is more so, if you come from the Niger Delta, as most of the names mentioned indicate. The contention has often been that politicians in Nigeria really do not care about the people. They go to line their pockets with public resources, and add fame to themselves. The matter, in Niger Delta, with specific regard to the Commission, is a matter of ‘Physician, Heal thyself”.
Lawmakers, minister, managing director and top staff of the commission hail from the region, yet they superintend over the sleaze that has seen a blessed region crawling with underdevelopment. They now dance on the graves of those who paid the supreme price for the zone. Some of these people will still shout from the rooftops about the deplorable conditions of the area.
Some governors from the zone have done well, yet it was the same zone that produced the first two governors in Nigeria to be jailed for looting. The region may not be getting the due right from the nation but, as the saying goes, morning shows the day. There are clear indications that the resources are as important as those who manage them. That region ought to be better than it is, and to think that elites from the place have held their people on that perpetual throe of underdevelopment. The NDDC typifies the Nigerian situation.
Someone has said that a forensic audit of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation would cause an earthquake!
