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From Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
Former chairman, Governing Board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, has advised the current Chairman, Mrs. Lauretta Onochie, to be guided by the provisions of the Establishment Act of the Commission.
He said the law establishing the NDDC provides for the powers of the board and that of its management.
He spoke against the backdrop of the rift over finances between the board chairman and managing director of the agency, Dr. Samuel Ogbuku.
Ndoma-Egba said though the overall powers of managing the commission reside with the board to provide the policy direction, it is the management that has the responsibility for the implementation of the policies.
“Ordinarily, there shouldn’t be a problem because the powers are clearly defined. But you see, where the problem comes is on the issue of control of funds. That is where the issue comes in because the various laws; Fiscal Responsibility Act, and even the NDDC Act, makes the Chief Executive Officer the accounting officer, and in some cases, liability for infractions of those laws are personal to the Chief Executive,” he said.
Ndoma-Egba while noting that the chief executive officer could not spend outside the budget, which must be approved by the board declared that the chairman is not an executive chairman who gives orders by fiat.
“The law does not have any powers attributed to the chairman. The powers of the chairman are the powers of the board and when we started, the first thing the board did was to donate their powers to me as chairman, to act in urgent cases. But you always come back to the board for them to ratify what you have done. So as chairman, you don’t have any special powers. The powers of the chairman are coterminous with the powers of the board. It is the Managing Director, that for instance, is named as the chief accounting officer, and by virtue of the extant laws, he is personally liable for the infraction of those laws.”
Ndoma-Egba regretted that the NDDC had not been allowed to grow, thus denying it of an established tradition which has stalled its development.
The erstwhile NDDC Chairman, recalled that in 2006, the then President Olusegun Obasanjo launched an elaborate regional development master plan, generated by Niger Delta stakeholders, state governments, oil companies, development partners and oil-producing communities.
On development efforts in the region, he lamented that the plan, envisaged to last for 15 years was abandoned, leaving the region without a road map thwarting development effort in the Niger Delta region.
He stressed that the starting point was to either re-validate the initial master plan which had a 15-year life span and had expired, or get a new master plan to kick start the comprehensive development of the Niger Delta region.
