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From Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
Again a peace advocacy group, Movement for Sustainable Development of the Niger Delta (MSDND), has sent a protest letter to President Muhammadu Buhari over an alleged plot to appoint another interim administrator for the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
According to it, the incumbent interim administrator, Mr Effiong Akwa is to be sacked but rather than appoint a substantive board, he is to be replaced by another interim administrator.
MSDND said the Niger Delta people reject in its totality the plot to appoint another interim administrator insisting that what the people are demanding is the immediate constitution of a substantive board for the commission as demanded by the NDDC Act.
The group in its letter to President Buhari, signed by its National Coordinator, Chief Ayibatekena Olodin alleged that some unscrupulous politicians are again plotting for the sack of Akwa to be replaced with another interim administrator, insisting that it is unacceptable and will be resisted by the people of the region.
Olodin, who implored President Buhari to listen to the people, noted that the appointment of another interim administrator would set the region further backwards.
He pleaded with Buhari to ignore those he described as wicked politicians from the Niger Delta region that are against the immediate reconstitution of a substantive board for the region.
While maintaining that the politicians behind the plot have failed the people in the region he added that they want to pit the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), against the people of the region given the abysmal rating of the APC in the region.
Olodin pointed out that despite the refusal of the Federal Government and multinational oil companies to release the trillions of naira owed the NDDC, the Akwa Effiong management team has fairly managed its limited resources in paying recurrent expenditures and offset some payments for projects owed past and present contractors of the commission.
“We have observed that in the Seven (7) years of your administration, a substantive board of the NDDC has never been constituted. Instead of constituting a board, all we have had under your administration is a dramatic monologue of confusion and administration brouhaha. Many Niger Delta stakeholders have written, and others have protested against the continued use of the affairs of the NDDC as a comic relief for an already tense polity. The lack of a substantive NDDC board has robbed the region of over seven years of substantive representation, economic growth and development,” the letter stated.
Olodin called on Buhari to salvage the falling rating of his administration and that of his party by appointing a substantive board to complete the announced sanitization of the commission.
We are writing to you, Your Excellency, to appoint a substantive NDDC board and in the meantime, to direct the Interim Administrator Mr Effiong Akwa to make outstanding payments to the suffering Niger Delta Contractors who have lost so much as many of their businesses and properties were confiscated by banks for failure to repay the loans, they took to fund their NDDC jobs. Many others have died in penury and left their siblings devastated.”
