Chinenye Anuforo
Stakeholders in Ukwa land, the oil producing area in Abia State, have commended President Muhammadu Buhari for ordering a forensic audit of the operations of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
The president had on Thursday, while receiving the governors of the states that make up the commission, stated that the things on the ground in the Niger Delta states do not justify the huge resources that have been made available to the commission.
The stakeholders, who spoke in separate interviews, hold the view that an audit of the commission’s operations was long overdue, stressing that the president’s action had demonstrated the fact that he was committed to ensuring that the people reaped the dividend of democracy.
Mr. Philemon Asonye Ogbonna, a Port Harcourt-based Chartered Accountant who is a native of Owaza community where oil was discovered in commercial quantity in 1958, said it was regrettable that since the NDDC was established, there was nothing monumental to show for it in their local government. He decried a situation where an oil-producing area like Ukwa cannot boast of any standard hospital, school or road.
Ogbonna, while applauding the Federal Government for the decision to audit the NDDC, called on Mr President to hasten the reconstitution of the board of the commission, as it would complement the good intention of the audit exercise.
Former Chairman of Asa Improvement Union, Umuahia branch, (a socio-cultural organisation in Ukwa land), Mr Ibeakolam Nwagbara said: “The birth of the NDDC was greeted with great excitement and expectations and to our people, it was to herald a positive change in our area but unfortunately, we don’t have much to show for it in terms of infrastructural development.”
He said an audit of the NDDC was long overdue, adding that all NDDC projects in the area were characterised by non- execution, poor execution, outright abandonment and non-functionality, adding that the commission was known for awarding non-existent roads and bridges contracts.
Nwagbara, who attributed the non-performance of the NDDC largely to the lack of input of critical stakeholders from the oil-producing areas in the nomination of members of the commission’s board, appealed to President Buhari to consider the recommendations of leaders from Ukwa land, being the only oil-producing area in Abia State, when reconstituting the NDDC board.
He advised the government to allow the opinions of critical stakeholders in the oil- producing areas to prevail over political considerations in the reconstitution of the NDDC board to avoid incessant protests that have continued to trail appointments into the commission, particularly in Abia state.
In her own reaction, a prominent women leader in the area, Mrs. Odochi Onuegbu, said it was unfortunate that in spite of the fact that women in Ukwa have been suffering as a result of the degradation of their farmlands following oil exploration and exploitation, the agencies set up by the governments like the NDDC and ASOPADEC have not done anything to improve the infrastructural decay in Ukwa land.
She lamented that many widows in her area cannot afford to send their children to private schools since the government-owned ones are nothing to write home about, pointing out that the two interventionist agencies have also not done anything to improve the standard of primary and secondary schools in the area.
Onuegbu said Ukwa land was littered with several NDDC abandoned projects, some of which are the Ugwati/Obokwe/Uratta road, 132/33 KV substation at Ikpokwu, Obokwe district hospital, Civic Centre and Sports complex. She wondered why an agency like the NDDC set up to bring succour to oil-producing areas would award contracts and payout money without ensuring that the projects had been properly executed.