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From Adewale Sanyaolu, Houston, Texas
The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has said it has engaged the services of independent assessors to tackle the menace of substandard projects and graft across the region.
NDDC Executive Director, Projects, Mr. Charles Ogunmola, stated this during an interview session with energy editors on the sidelines of the Oil Technology Conference (OTC) which ended last week in Houston Texas, USA.
Prior to now, he said only NDDC workers monitored projects but that going forward, the Commission has now involved independent entities to monitor the outcome of projects.
The firms according to him are not just stationed in one location but move across states to monitor projects.
‘‘The hired organisation would not just stay in one location. For instance, if an organisation monitors a project in Abia today, the next project monitoring will be in Rivers or Akwa Ibom.
So by that, it becomes difficult for the independent assessor to establish a relationship with any contractor. And that helps the Commission to get an objective view and status about such a project from our internal workers who are very competent and external umpire”.
He added that the Commission now has an advisory board for its budgeting process and must see that State Governors, National Assembly, traditional rulers, youth and pressure groups sign off on a project before implementation begins.
‘‘So at the end of the day, when a project comes out, nobody can feign ignorance of not being part of the process,’’ Ogunmola said every project must have an outcome framework where all boxes related to the project must be ticked by the contractor handling such project.
He explained that a situation where roads are built without drainages, sidewalks, culverts and streetlights would no longer be acceptable to the commission.
‘‘The era where a contractor just comes with a certificate of job completion to be signed off without meeting the requirements of project outcome will now be a thing of the past,’’.
On funding, he said the Commission has developed a strategy to attract additional funding sources in line with the Act setting it up.
The NDDC Executive Director said the Commission was now exploring global funding and Private Public Partnership (PPP) arrangement in addition to its traditional sources of funding which included; three per cent oil company budget, 15 per cent FAAC allocation and 50 per cent Ecological Fund.
To attract some of these options, he said the operations of the Commission must be open and not opaque; hence the decision to hire one of the best international consulting firms to help it set up a strong corporate governance structure.
‘‘We are currently in talks with PwC, KPMG and Deloitte for one of them to come in and establish our corporate governance structure so that we will be able to operate like any other world class organization where everything is run with probity and guided with the best in practice rules of governance.
Which should start the journey of our corporate governance renewal and that is ongoing at the moment. We hope to establish a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) within the next 30 to 60 days.
Going forward, Ogunmola said every project request must be business case based, adding that before now, the commission State offices used to be restricted to inspection.
Moving forward, we are now going to have NDDC officials at Local Government level. A lot of the requirement from the community must come from the community. Everyone must be involved, including youths and community leaders and local pressure groups.
So when the decision comes out, it is a collective decision that no one in the community can deny knowledge of.
The Local Community must now come up with a needs assessment which must be signed off by the community leaders. And it is the people in the community that will execute such projects,’’.
